The Real Reason Why We Don't Explore The Mariana Trench | Unveiled

The Real Reason We Don’t Explore the Mariana Trench

We humans love to explore. Country to country, continent to continent, and in more recent times planet to planet. But, really, although getting better acquainted with other worlds is certainly exciting, we don’t yet know all there is to know about even our own. Not by a long way. And, for some areas in particular, we haven’t even begun to work out what’s there.

This is Unveiled and today we’re exploring the real reason why we don’t explore the Mariana Trench.

The entire ocean is still a very mysterious place. It may cover more of our planet than anything else, but there’s still so much we don’t know about it. But perhaps the single most mystifying and interesting location in all the ocean is the deepest and darkest part of it, the Mariana Trench. Located in the Pacific near the Mariana Islands, the trench is deeper than Mount Everest is tall, reaching almost seven miles below the surface of the water. It also stretches along the bottom of the sea for around 1,500 miles but, despite its size, so much of it has yet to be explored. For a direct comparison, more than 4,000 people have now successfully climbed Mount Everest… but fewer than thirty people have ever seen the Mariana Trench in person. Even fewer than that have been to the very, very bottom of it… and besides one ground-breaking mission in 1960, all that have seen it have descended in the years since just 2012.

What’s surprising, is that it’s not as though it’s a new discovery, either. The trench has been known about since at least the 1870s, but successful bids to get down there have been few and far between. Of course, back in the late nineteenth century, it was completely impossible to visit the trench due to the limits in technology… and to a certain extent the technological challenge is still immense. But then, climbing Everest isn’t exactly easy, so why do we know comparatively so little about our deepest point compared to our highest? Today, midway through the twenty-first century, not nearly enough research has been done to satisfy scientists or the general public regarding what the Mariana Trench is, what it’s like, and what could be down there. It’s easily one of the least visited places on Earth, which is a bit of a head-scratcher given how important we increasingly realize the oceans to be.

Here’s what we do know. The Mariana Trench is one of the most extreme environments on Earth. However, life still finds a way. Previous expeditions - though few - have found various species of snailfish, amphipods, and eels, seemingly thriving in the abyss. The deepest fish ever spotted also inhabits the trench, as an unknown but distinct species. As much as the trench itself is fascinating, though, so is the hours-long descent down into it. And beyond discovering new life, if we can explore this part of the ocean, it helps us to further study the climate and wider Earth environment. Does carbon in our atmosphere reach all the way to the deepest depths, for instance? How about plastic? And if so, then how does that affect the species and systems that are there? Studying and cataloging here could further lead to advancements in energy, the understanding of natural disasters, and even medicine. But if that’s the case, why don’t we already know more about it?

While the trench isn’t totally unexplored, what’s significant is that most of the visits that have been made so far are by private adventurers or independently wealthy people. They’re not necessarily goal-oriented science expeditions and, what’s more, there don’t appear to be any purely scientific missions planned in the near future. The main reason for this is seemingly the risk/reward concept that all scientific endeavors are graded by. Safety is a massive concern for obvious reasons, and there’s no getting around it; the Mariana Trench is an extremely dangerous place.

According to the NASA oceanographer Gene Carl Feldman, speaking to the non-profit Oceana, “In some ways, it’s a lot easier to send people to space than it is to send people to the bottom of the ocean”. The depths of the ocean are riddled with risk. The intense pressures are a thousand times more than on Earth’s surface, and enough to instantly crush unprotected humans and most living animals. There’s also zero visibility down there, with the creatures that can survive the conditions having evolved over time to make do. There are near freezing temperatures to contend with, too, with the trench cold enough to again kill most unprotected creatures. Ultimately, though, the pressure is the main difference maker between a voyage to the bottom of the sea and a journey into space. We’re still not entirely sure how to combat it, with some past explorers reportedly witnessing their window panes crack and hearing the sounds of metal deforming on their vehicles - all thanks to the pressure. In fact, in 2014 the accomplished Nereus explorer, a machine built specifically for intense pressures, imploded six miles beneath the ocean, causing pieces of its mechanical body to float to the surface. Luckily, there was no crew on board.

This is a problem for future exploration, in more ways than one. In order to get funding for missions, state-backed scientific agencies tend to prefer opting for low-risk ones with at least a good knowledge of wherever it is they’re journeying to, to erase any uncertainty. When applying for funds, there’s a general feeling that what those funds are being used for should 1) be safe 2) be likely to deliver results and 3) be worth the investment, in that it should be unlikely to break, fall apart, or fail. But uncertainty under all those guises is impossible to avoid in the ocean. The simplest example is that there aren’t any complete maps of the Mariana Trench at present because there haven’t been enough expeditions there to build one, which forms a catch-22. Agencies are afraid to fund missions because it’s unmapped, but it’s unmapped because they’re afraid to fund missions.

Even if we were to resolve this hesitancy by budget-makers, though, the challenges of exploring the trench remain massive from an engineering point of view. There are unique and specific hurdles when constructing the equipment for ocean exploration. These machines must work for hours on end without maintenance; they need enough emergency power; infallible temperature regulation; they need to withstand the corrosiveness of sea water; and, of course, they need to mitigate the pressure. And it’s not just the core of a deep sea vehicle, either. Every single joint, arm, and extension has to be just as strong, to take samples and engage with the environment. Ultimately, exploring the ocean - not least the Mariana Trench - is a really difficult business. Made all the more so because of an apparent lack of incentive. That risk/reward balance rarely falls in favor of more money being spent on the trench, with off-Earth projects to the likes of Mars always seeming to take precedence for public funding.

The trench isn’t the only remote corner of our own planet to remain un (or under) explored. We know there are thousands of miles of cave systems below the ground, too, for example, but precious few people have ever stepped foot inside most of them, either. For now, what little exploration of the trench there is… is usually driven by wealthy individuals with a keen interest, like the movie director James Cameron. They can fund the expedition with their own money, fully aware of the risks and challenges. But, for governments around the world, the urgency isn’t there despite the wealth of knowledge that we’d gain.

It’s a somewhat depressing reality of the modern world. There’s only so much state-sponsored study that’s possible, which means that while some areas thrive… others are neglected. The Mariana Trench is, at present, one of those comparatively neglected areas, no matter the fact that the life that exists down there is incredible; or the pollution that can be found there should be a major concern for us all. It’s not like we’ve never explored this place, but we certainly haven’t gotten to know it well. It’s a huge area, with countless discoveries still to be made there… and until we get more to grips with it, it’ll remain one of the most mysterious environments on the planet.

Perhaps that mystery is all part of the growing legend of the trench, and will one day inspire us to study it more… but, for now, it’s an incredibly difficult place to even reach let alone understand. In the future, scientists (and the watching world) must be able to persuade governments and organizations that the rewards actually do outweigh the risks here. Perhaps that will only come with technological innovations, or a complete change of mindset… but that’s the real reason why we don’t explore the Mariana Trench.