The communities of sea creatures push the boundaries of what we know about life.

The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail.

Now imagine taking a sub nearly three times deeper.

That’s what an international team of scientists did last summer. Led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the researchers took a manned submersible to the bottom of deep-sea trenches in an area in the northwest Pacific Ocean, roughly between Japan and Alaska, reaching a depth of more than 31,000 feet.

The researchers weren’t looking for a shipwreck. They were interested in what else might be lurking on the seafloor, which is so deep that no light can reach it.

[...]

...read more at archive.is