31-07-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Life finds a way in the deepest ocean trenches
A team of scientists have embarked on a voyage spanning 2,500km (1,550 miles) along the Kuril-Kamchatka and Aleutian Trenches in the northwestern Pacific. Diving to depths ranging from 5,800 to 9,533 metres, they discovered flourishing chemosynthetic life deep in hadal trenches. The communities are dominated by marine tubeworms called siboglinid polychaetes and molluscs called bivalves, which synthesise their energy using hydrogen sulphide and methane seeping out of faults in tectonic plates.
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