20 December 2024
This month Schmidt Ocean posted a beautiful deep sea video from their deep sea rover’s voyage off the Pacific coast of South America.
11 Dec 2024: After 55 days of exploration, the #ChileMargin2024 expedition team is heading home. Researchers have been exploring along a margin where a submerged continental shelf extends from the country’s west coast and drops steeply and suddenly into the Pacific Ocean.
— video description from Schmidt Ocean on YouTube
Did you see the rocks and cliffs in the video? If you could see the entire formation without the ocean in the way, it is actually a very steep mountain range from the bottom of the trench to the top of the Andes, more than 15,000 meters or about 49,300 feet(*) with squids at the bottom and birds at the top.
This area is so deep because the Nazca Plate is subducting under the South American Plate, causing the Andes to rise and the Peru-Chile Trench to plunge deeper.
And who is the creature with the big eyes and cockatoo crest? Learn more in this short video from Schmidt Ocean on Instagram.
(*) The Himalayas are 8,849 meters (29,032 feet).
Schmidt Ocean Institute is a 501(c)(3) private non-profit operating foundation established to advance oceanographic research, discovery, and knowledge, and catalyze sharing of information about the oceans.
— About Schmidt Ocean Institute