The Mariana Trench

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the wonders of the natural world. In 1875 in the western Pacific, the crew of HMS Challenger discovered the Mariana Trench which turned out to be deeper than Everest is high, by two kilometres. Trenches like Mariana form when one tectonic plate slips under another and heads down and there are around fifty of them globally. While at one time some thought it was too dark and deep for life there and others wildly imagined monsters, the truth has turned out to be much more surprising.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Heather Stewart No other episodes
  Director of Kelpie Geoscience and Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia
• Professor Jon Copley No other episodes
  Professor of Ocean Exploration and Science Communication at the University of Southampton
• Alan Jamieson No other episodes
  Director of the Deep Sea Research Centre at the University of Western Australia

Reading list

• The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean
  Susan Casey (Doubleday, 2023) Google Books →
• Deep Sea: 10 Things You Should Know
  Jon Copley (Orion Books, 2023) Google Books →
• Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor
  Hali Felt (Henry Holt & Co, 2012)
• Pseudoliparis swirei: A newly-discovered hadal liparid (Scorpaeniformes: Liparidae) from the Mariana Trench
  M.E. Gerringer (Zootaxa, 2017)
• The Hadal Zone: Life in the Deepest Oceans
  A.J. Jamieson (Cambridge University Press, 2015) Google Books →
• A global assessment of fishes at lower abyssal and upper hadal depths (5000 to 8000 m)
  A.J. Jamieson et al. (Deep-Sea Research Part 1, 2021)
• Fear and loathing of the deep ocean: Why don't people care about the deep sea?
  A.J. Jamieson et al. (ICES Journal of Marine Science, 2020)
• Microplastic and synthetic fibers ingested by deep-sea amphipods in six of the deepest marine environments on Earth
  A.J. Jamieson et al. (Royal Society Open Science, 2019)
• Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna
  A.J. Jamieson et al. (Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2017)
• Safety and conservation at the deepest place on Earth: A call for prohibiting the deliberate discarding of nondegradable umbilicals from deep-sea exploration vehicles
  V.L. Vescovo et al. (Marine Policy, 2021)
• New species of Eurythenes from hadal depths of the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean (Crustacea: Amphipoda)
  J.N.J. Weston et al. (Zootaxa, 2020)

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Programme ID: m002q38k

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q38k

Auto-category: 551.46 (Oceanography)