Despite all our current knowledge and technology, all that we understand and can do,
up to roughly sixty-seven percent of the Earth’s surface, to this day,
remains unexplored and unseen by human eyes. Around seventy-one percent of Earth's surface
is covered by ocean. Most of us know this: we know that the ocean is very big. But when you
realize that up to potentially ninety-five percent of it is still unexplored, unmapped, and unseen,
you also realize that the ocean is not only huge, it is disturbingly unknown.
There is a specific type of phobia known as thalassophobia, which is the intense fear of
deep bodies of water, like the ocean and sea. For some, the mere sight of underwater images
can be enough to severely trigger this phobia. For others, the feeling might only be felt when
physically swimming in deep water or out on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Like most phobias,
there is variance in the intensity and forms experienced amongst sufferers. Arguably, however,
the more one learns about the ocean, the more thalassophobia, in at least some acute form,
is likely to reveal itself in most of us. Being fearful of a beastly,
earie state of matter mostly steeped in darkness that you are not built to survive in,
where dangerous things loom around that are built to thrive in it, doomed to have your life taken
from you by merely going too deep or staying in too long, can just make a lot of sense.
The average depth of the ocean is about 2.3 miles, or 3,700 meters. Key word, however, is average.
The deepest parts of the ocean run much, much deeper—deeper than most of us are likely aware
and deeper than most of us can likely comprehend. Taking a brief journey into its depths, starting
a bit closer to the surface, at 500m beneath it, we find ourselves in the middle of what is
referred to as the twilight zone. For reference, at this depth, if you stood at the very top of the
tip of the One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the United States, and looked down,
that’s about how deep you would be submerged at this depth. This is about the maximum depth that
modern nuclear attack submarines typically travel—the deepest most non-research vessels
can traverse without risking literally being imploded by the weight of the water pressure.
Here, light rapidly dissipates with each meter deeper we go, and amidst the increasing darkness,
we find strange and unsettling creatures. Among which are sperm whales hunting, battling,
and feeding on giant and colossal squids, all as big as the size of houses. Even more frightening,
despite their massive size, we didn’t even know that colossal squids existed until 1925. Also
in this area are otherworldly bioluminescent creatures that produce and emit light as a means
of hunting and avoiding being hunted. Even more unsettling than what we do know about this area
is what we don’t. A large number of various types of organisms in this zone remain mostly
a mystery given their elusiveness and the difficult conditions for research activity.
If we go two times deeper, five hundred more meters, at around 1,000m under the surface,
we reach the midnight zone. This depth would be the equivalent distance of stacking more than
seven of The Great Pyramids of Giza on top of each other. At this point, light from the surface no
longer reaches here, and it is pitch black. Light that traveled around ninety-three million miles,
or about one hundred fifty billion meters from the sun, through space, through earth’s atmosphere,
and onto earth’s surface, at just 1,000m, or a little over half a mile, under the ocean, it has
met its match and been killed off in entirety. The murkiness and darkness of the water here is
so extreme that massive objects like sunken ships and airplanes, even when illuminated by powerful
lights, can only be seen in mere fractions of tens of feet. And yet, in this void, life still lurks.
Creatures in this zone survive and thrive in complete darkness under extreme water
pressure. With no light, hostile conditions, and increasingly rare prey, killing and eating
is something that must be done successfully and efficiently at every opportunity. Strange,
alien-like creatures like the anglerfish, frilled shark, vampire squid, gulper eel, and much more,
all use various and sometimes gruesome tactics to hunt, eat, and avoid being eaten in this zone.
As deep and as strange as this zone is, we are not even at ten percent
of the deepest point of the known ocean yet. And the deeper we go, life and conditions only get
more mysterious and more intense. At around four times deeper,
4,000m under the surface, we reach what is known as the abyssal zone. This zone is where,
on average, the ocean floor is found. Although, there is still around seven thousand more meters,
nearly three times deeper, before we reach the deepest known area of the ocean.
Despite all technological development over the course of modern history,
technological achievments that have taken humans to the moon and back, only just about
three years ago, in 2019, did a manned vessel reach the floor of the deepest known area.
At 10,934m under the surface, investor and former naval office Victor Vescovo
holds the world record for the deepest any human has ever traveled into the ocean.
In his deep diving submersible, here, Vescovo reached to deepest point in the deepest part
of the deepest zone of the known ocean, known as Challenger Deep, located in the Mariana trench.
For reference, the average commercial airline flight altitude is around 11,000m,
meaning, at this point, Vescovo was as deep in the ocean as you are in the sky when looking out
the window of a fully ascended commercial flight. Despite the seemingly impossible, uninhabitable
conditions at this incomprehensible depth, there is still life found down here. Creatures like
xenophyophores, abnormally large amphipods, and sea cucumbers all exist on this floor of the void.
Perhaps even eerier about this area is that it is the deepest part of the known ocean,
but only the known ocean. With only up to around five to ten percent of the ocean being effectively
mapped, the possibility for significantly deeper parts containing other forms of life, other
conditions and ecosystems, and who knows what else is believed by scientists to be extremely likely.
Scientists estimate that there are thousands of marine species we have yet to discover.
How often have you looked up into the night sky with at least some ominous curiosity
or perhaps even fear of what is out there—what creatures and things might lurk,
how far and where it all goes. It is fairly common to wonder and contemplate about space as the great
remaining unknown, but yet, on our very own planet, we still don’t even really know what’s
here with us right now. Aliens exist, and they are right next to and beneath us all the time.
Whether you have thalassophobia or not, there is something deeply unsettling about the awareness
that we share and inhabit a planet with something we are so unaware of—a vast,
powerful body of water containing creatures that look like they are out of a cosmic horror film,
some of which we know of, many that we do not. The ocean is so vast, so unexplored, and so hard
to travel and see within, what could it hide? What potential creatures who’ve adapted to
hide and prey in these conditions hide from us; a creature adapted to a completely different world?
The ocean is somehow both terrifying and awe inspiring, grotesque and beautiful,
vast and claustrophobic, all at the same time. It reminds us of the strangeness of life, of what
it means to exist, evolve, and inhabit a planet. It reminds us of our meekness and powerlessness.
Arguably, the source of at least an acute form of thalassophobia runs through and
connects us all—the fear and wonder of the unknown, the unseen, and the uncontrollable,
the feeling of being helpless, and the existential anxiety of a world so unfamiliar, dangerous,
uninhabitable, and not meant for us that is just a right there, next to us, above us, and below us.