we were about to enter the abyss the graveyard of the oceans a ghostly landscape built of the skeletons of everything that sinks here hold your breath we're on a journey to the bottom of the ocean from the strange geology of the continental shelf pass the black smokers on the mid-ocean ridge we're heading into the abyss almost two and a half miles down we pass the wreck of the Titanic and then we're there the seafloor between two and a half and three point eight miles down is known as the abyssal plain the pressure here is phenomenal
enough to crush a soccer ball nearly to the size of a marble this is home to the largest landscape on our planet put together the abyssal Plains make up more than 60% of the Earth's surface this is the graveyard of the ocean no sunlight penetrates this deep but everything that sinks in the sea above comes to rest here ships see creatures and snow drive along the sea floor of the abyss and you drive through a blizzard a snowstorm that has continued non-stop for thousands of years this is marine snow and it creates the flat sea
floor of the abyssal plain when tiny plants and animals living in the upper part of the ocean die their skeletons start to sink on their own the cells of these plants are so small and light they would typically take over 150 years to reach the sea floor many would dissolve before they got there but scientists find that when glued together with the sticky mucus from small plants called phytoplankton they form large clumps but can sink in only a few weeks this is marine snow the flurry of marine snowflakes carries 815 million tons of carbon to
the sea floor each year for the animals that live here it's like manna from heaven they rely on it for food over thousands of years Marine snow and other sediment build up into a thick layer when geologists drill through the sea floor in the abyssal Plains they have to drill through several hundred feet of sediment before they hit bedrock they bring up core after core of gas using mud the remains of marine snow and other detritus from top to bottom the core of sediment from the deepest drill hole stretches for three miles that's 11 times
the height of the Empire State Building down here wrecks of Spanish galleons and other sunken ships take thousands of years to disintegrate but they're not the only things decaying of a sea floor you
