The earth’s crust has the deepest faults under the waters of the World Ocean, which are commonly called sea depressions or gutters. These places are not thoroughly studied by science, due to their incredible depth.
Top 10 entered the deepest troughs of the oceansknown today.
10. Aleutian Trench
Aleutian Trench opens the top ten deepest basins of the oceans. It runs along the southern coast of Alaska and stretches to the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Length - 3400 km, maximum depth - 7679 m. It is the boundary between lithospheric plates. The North American Plate, crawling onto the Pacific Plate, forms the island arc of the Aleutian Islands along the gutter. In the west, in the Komandor region, the depression passes into the Kuril-Kamchatka trench, which has a south-western direction.
9. Java or Sunda Basin
Javanese or Sunda Basin - one of the deepest in the eastern Indian Ocean. It extends for 4-5 thousand km along the southern part of the Sunda island arc. The trench begins at the foot of the continental slope of Myanmar in the form of a shallow trough with a bottom width of up to 50 km. Then, towards Java, it gradually deepens and its bottom narrows to 10 km. The maximum depth reaches 7730 meters, which makes it the deepest depression of the Indian Ocean. The bottom of the gutter southeast of Java is a series of depressions separated by rapids. The slopes are steep, asymmetric, insular above and steeper than the oceanic and more dissected by canyons and complicated by steps and ledges. In the northern and central parts, the bottom up to 35 km wide is leveled with a layer of terrigenous sediments with a large admixture of volcanic material, the thickness of which in the north reaches 3 km. In the Sunda Trench, an Australian plate dives under the Sunda plate, forming a subduction zone. It is seismically active and is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
8. Puerto Rico
Puerto rico - A deep ocean trench located on the border of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The formation of the gutter is associated with a complex transition between the subduction zone from the south along the island arc of the Lesser Antilles and the transform fault zone (plate boundary), which extends east between Cuba and Haiti through the Cayman trench to the coast of Central America. Studies have confirmed the possibility of significant tsunamis as a result of earthquakes in the area. The island of Puerto Rico is located directly south of the hollow. The length of the gutter is 1754 km, the width is about 97 km, the greatest depth is 8380 m, which is the maximum depth of the Atlantic Ocean. Measurements taken in 1955 from the American ship Vima showed a depth of Puerto Rico 8385 meters.
7. Izu-Boninsky Depression
Izu Bonin Depression or the Izu-Ogasavar Trench - one of the deepest Pacific Ocean, located along the eastern foot of the ridge of the Nampo Islands, stretching from Honshu Island to the Bonin Islands. In the north it connects to the Japanese trench, in the south it is separated from the Volkano trough by a high narrow ridge. The length of the gutter is 1030 km. The narrow, sometimes flat, bottom of the gutter is divided by thresholds into several closed depressions with depths of 7000–9000 m. The maximum depth of 9810 meters was established in 1955 by the Soviet expedition on the Vityaz vessel.
6. Kermadek
Kermadek - one of the deepest trenches in the north connected to the Tonga Trench. It is located at the eastern foot of the Kermadek islands almost in the meridional direction. The length is about 1200 km. Kermadek was discovered in 1889 by the expedition of the British ship “Penguin”. The maximum depth of 10,047 meters was measured in 1958 during the voyage of the Soviet research vessel Vityaz. The hollow is named after Juon de Cermadec
5. Japanese trench
Japanese gutter - A deep depression in the west of the Pacific Ocean east of the island of Honshu, south of Hokkaido and north of the Bonin Islands. The length of the gutter exceeds 1000 km. The transverse profile of the gutter is V-shaped. The maximum measured depth is 10504 m. The depression is the southern continuation of the Kuril-Kamchatka trench. Three researchers using the Shinkai 6500 on August 11, 1989 reached a depth of 6526 m. In October 2008, the Japanese-British expedition managed to photograph sea slugs, the deepest fish, at a depth of 7700 m. The bottom and walls of the crack often become the epicenters of earthquakes.
4. Kuril-Kamchatka Trench
Kuril-Kamchatka Trench ranks fourth in the top of the deepest troughs of the oceans. It is located on the eastern underwater slopes of the Kuril Islands and the southern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Length 2170 km, average width 59 km. The maximum depth is 10,542 m. The boundaries of the depression approximately coincide with the isobath of 6,000 m. On the slopes there are numerous ledges, terraces, and also valleys descending to the maximum depth. It was investigated mainly in the 1950s by Soviet expeditions on the Vityaz vessel.
3. Philippine Trench
Philippine Trench opens the top three deepest basins of the oceans. Located east of the Philippine Islands. Its length is 1320 km, from the northern part of Luzon Island to the Mollusk Islands. The deepest point is 10,540 m. The Philippine Trench is the result of a collision of earth layers. Oceanic, with a 5-kilometer wide, but with a specific gravity (basalt), the Philippine Sea Plate moves at a speed of 16 cm per year under a 60-kilometer, lower specific gravity (granite), the Eurasian Plate, and melts due to the mantle of the Earth on depth from 50 to 100 km. This geophysical process is called subduction. In this zone is the Philippine Depression.
2. Tonga
Tonga takes second place in the list of the deepest troughs of the oceans. Its total length is 860 km. It extends along the foot of the eastern slope of the underwater ridge of the same name from the islands of Samoa and the Kermadek trench. The depth along the isobath is about 6000 m - about 80 km. The maximum depth is 10,882 m - the largest depth of the oceans in the southern hemisphere.
Mariana Trench - the deepest depression of the oceans. The deepest point is the Challenger Abyss, which is 10,994 meters below sea level. recent studies conducted by the American Oceanographic Expedition from the University of New Hampshire (USA) found real mountains on the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The research took place from August to October 2010, when using the multi-beam echo sounder, a bottom area of 400,000 square kilometers was studied in detail. As a result, at least 4 oceanic mountain ranges 2.5 km high were found crossing the surface of the Mariana Trench at the contact point of the Pacific and Philippine lithospheric plates.