A Hidden World of Life Has Been Found 31,000 Feet Beneath the Ocean

The deepest parts of the ocean can seem almost impossible to imagine. There is no sunlight, the pressure is crushing, the water is cold, and the landscape belongs to a region most humans will never see directly. Yet scientists have now found that even there, life is not merely surviving. It may be flourishing in ways that challenge what we thought we knew about the limits of biology.

Using the human-occupied submersible Fendouzhe, researchers explored the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and the western Aleutian Trench in the northwest Pacific. At depths reaching around 31,000 feet, they discovered extensive chemosynthesis-based communities, identified 7,564 species of prokaryotic microorganisms, and found that most of them had never been seen before. The study was published in Nature and suggests that the deepest ocean may be far more alive than expected.