Ocean Depth Explorer
Dive from the sunlit surface to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. As you descend, watch the light vanish, the pressure climb, and the creatures get very strange indeed.
13 atm
Almost all ocean life lives here.
40%
Sunlight zone
How it works
Every 10 metres of water adds roughly one extra atmosphere of pressure — the same as the entire column of air above your head.
Water absorbs red light first, then orange and yellow. By 200 metres only faint blue remains; below 1,000 metres there is no sunlight at all.
Life adapts: big eyes and bioluminescence in the twilight zone, gelatinous bodies and slow metabolisms in the crushing dark below.
Fun facts
The deepest point on Earth, Challenger Deep, is nearly 11 km down — deeper than Everest is tall.
More than 80% of the ocean has never been mapped in detail.
Pressure at the bottom of the trench is over 1,000 times what you feel at sea level.
Around 76% of deep-sea animals make their own light.
