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Secrets Of The Mariana Trench, Caught On Camera

A deep-sea anglerfish within the pillow basalts in the Mariana Trench area. You can see its round lure between its two eyes. This fish is an ambush predator that waits for prey to be attracted by the lure before rapidly capturing them in one gulp with its large mouth.
Courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas
A deep-sea anglerfish within the pillow basalts in the Mariana Trench area. You can see its round lure between its two eyes. This fish is an ambush predator that waits for prey to be attracted by the lure before rapidly capturing them in one gulp with its large mouth.

Deep in the ocean, a mission is underway to explore the "unknown and poorly known areas" around the Mariana Trench.

"Despite decades of previous work in the region," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, "much of the [trench] and surrounding areas remain unexplored."

Between April 20 and July 10, the government agency and its partners are collecting and sharing data on the creatures and habitats they find in the Mariana Trench, which stretches 1,500 miles in the Pacific Ocean near Guam.

You can follow NOAA's live video streams from the Okeanos Explorer, including images from the ocean floor. (Sometimes the streams show maps and computers rather than sea creatures, but you can see video highlights here, too.)

It's all pretty mind-blowing when you think about it, but here are a couple highlights:

A mesmerizing jellyfish found around 3,700 meters (2.3 miles) down.

"At the beginning of the video, you'll see that the long tentacles are even and extended outward and the bell is motionless," NOAA notes. "This suggests an ambush predation mode. Within the bell, the radial canals in red are connecting points for what looks like the gonads in bright yellow."

Watch this purple sea cucumber undulate through the water.

Also, "pillow lava."

"These pillow basalts ... form when basaltic lava erupts underwater," NOAA explains. "Cold seawater chills the erupting lava, creating a rounded tube of basalt crust that looks like a pillow. As the newly erupting lava pushes through the chilled basalt crust, it can form scratches on the pillow surface, called striations."

Pillow lava in the Mariana Trench from an eruption that is less than three years old.
/ Courtesy of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas
/
Courtesy of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas
Pillow lava in the Mariana Trench from an eruption that is less than three years old.

Two years ago, the "ghost fish" of the Mariana Trench surfaced in the news. The "deepest living fish ever recorded" was among the discoveries from researchers who were stunned by the amount of life they found, as NPR's Christopher Joyce reported. That's despite the trench being — as Chris put it — "a place of perpetual darkness and freezing cold."

In another Mariana Trench experiment, scientists from NOAA and Oregon State University dropped a microphone 6 miles down. It's surprisingly noisy: Hear it for yourself.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Dana Farrington is a digital editor coordinating online coverage on the Washington Desk — from daily stories to visual feature projects to the weekly newsletter. She has been with the NPR Politics team since President Trump's inauguration. Before that, she was among NPR's first engagement editors, managing the homepage for NPR.org and the main social accounts. Dana has also worked as a weekend web producer and editor, and has written on a wide range of topics for NPR, including tech and women's health.