Sounding — 51°N, a research station
Sounding
To fathom is to measure the depth of water — and, later, to understand a thing completely. This is a descent through both senses of the word. Scroll to let go of the surface.
Scroll to descend ▼
Zone 01
The Sunlit Zone
The epipelagic. Everything that photosynthesises in the ocean lives in this bright ceiling of water. It is loud with drifting life: plankton blooms, a constant fall of marine snow catching the light like dust in a window.
- Depth
- 0 – 200 m
- Temperature
- 18 – 24 °C
- Surface light
- 100 – 20 %
- Company
- Plankton, tuna, turtles
Zone 02
The Twilight Zone
The mesopelagic. Sunlight thins to a blue rumour and then to nothing. The first animals here make their own light — a pinprick, a lure, a startled flash. Move your cursor; it carries a little light of its own now.
- Depth
- 200 – 1,000 m
- Temperature
- 4 – 18 °C
- Surface light
- 20 – 0 %
- Company
- Lanternfish, hatchetfish, squid
Zone 03
The Midnight Zone
The bathypelagic. No sunlight has ever reached here. The water is near-freezing and the pressure would collapse your lungs. What lives here is patient and strange, and it answers to a sound. Click to send a ping into the dark.
- Depth
- 1,000 – 4,000 m
- Temperature
- 2 – 4 °C
- Surface light
- 0 %
- Company
- Anglerfish, gulper eel, vampire squid
Zone 04
The Abyss
The abyssopelagic. A flat, cold plain covering more than half the planet’s solid surface, and almost none of it has been seen. Life is sparse and slow. Food is whatever falls from far above and finally lands.
- Depth
- 4,000 – 6,000 m
- Temperature
- 2 – 3 °C
- Pressure
- 400 – 600 atm
- Company
- Sea pigs, tripod fish, brittle stars
Zone 05
The Trench
The hadal zone — the deep trenches, named for Hades. You are at the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, 10,935 metres down. Three people have stood here. The sea floor is pale sediment, and even now there are animals in it.
- Depth
- 10,935 m
- Temperature
- 1 – 4 °C
- Pressure
- 1,086 atm
- Company
- Amphipods, snailfish, xenophyophores
That is the whole water column. Everything that lives, from the brightest metre to this one, sorted by how much light it gets.
A concept piece by Fathom Studio. Depth data after NOAA & WHOI.