Ocean

We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean.

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The Ocean is about six miles deep at its deepest depth in the Pacific’s Mariana Trench. The pressure at that depth is eight tons per sq. inch. The pressure at Ocean’s average depth of fifteen thousand feet is about six tons per sq. inch. No wonder little more than five percent of the Ocean deep has been explored. Only in the past hundred or so years has anyone gotten further than a few fathoms below the surface.

It’s a crushing task to go deep. Marine biologist, Paul Snelgrove, has said we know more about the surface of the Moon than we know about the bottom of the Ocean. Moreover, there’s a lot of water to explore. Ocean covers nearly seventy-five percent of the earth’s surface. Continents seem islands surrounded by all that water.

Still, men have pushed off from solid ground to travel the sea-road for millennia.

Who and when and are disputed. Ancient mariners left no records, only scraps of evidence for anthropologists to argue over. Some make a case that people from the Solutren Culture of southern France rowed their primitive boats along the pack ice of the last glacial maximum all the way to the modern-day coast of the American Carolinas.

That would be 21,000 to 17,000 years ago.

Polynesians have been sailing the Pacific from island to island for some uncountable time, carrying their pigs and chickens with them. They sailed on ingeniously sea-stable ships called catamarans. They explored thousands of miles of the Pacific all the way to the west coast of South America - centuries before the Vikings reached north America. A few centuries after that Vasco da Gama lowered his caravel and three smaller ships onto the Atlantic and set off to discover a sea route to India. Despite not being the first, Vasco da Gama gets credit for being the earliest explorer of Ocean because he was the first to write about his explorations. History is made by those who write it.

Even after years of exploring of Ocean’s surface, Ocean still keeps secrets. Small new islands are discovered nearly every year. Navigational charting is an ongoing project. The 1504 Lenox Globe labeled unknown parts of the sea, “Here be Dragons”. There were a lot of such places for a very long time. “Here be Dragons” covered any potential danger, including sea monsters.

Moderns scoff at tales of sea monsters. Lately, some have been discovered.

The Kraken, a squid-like monster large enough to pull down ships, was long dismissed as fable. A few years ago marine biologists captured a colossal giant-squid on video. Its estimated length was close to fifty feet, large enough to pull down any small sailing ship. It’s rarely seen because it rarely comes to the surface.

How many other fabulous creatures lurk in the Ocean deep?

Knowledge of deep-sea life is skimpy. Most of the known creatures are strange enough to seem like aliens from another planet. Many are bioluminescent. They light up the black depths with chemical light produced by their own bodies. Even stranger, the lights travel along their forms like pulsing neon signs. Their forms are often jelly-like with long trailing tentacles that glow and flow in an ever-moving psychedelic light show.

It would be overwhelming if they weren’t so far apart. The black depths are sparsely populated. Most life is clustered around hydrothermal vents. These vents produce chemicals that bacteria feed upon. The bacteria multiply into mats of bacteria that other life feeds upon. The creatures that feed on bacteria are in turn eaten by larger creatures. Others survive on scraps of carrion that drift down from the surface.

Bug-eyed fishes with ferocious needle-like fangs are common. They look like monsters, and would be, if they weren’t so small. Giants are rare, though that may mean only that new ones have yet to be discovered. We know about colossal squid, giant octopuses and giant crustations; who knows what future discovery might reveal?

There are vast mountain ranges, canyons, ravines, and volcanoes under Ocean that are barely explored. The largest geographical feature on Earth, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, is a mountain chain that runs from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Most of the ridge is under water but it becomes land as: Iceland; the Azores; Saint Helena; Ascension; Tristan da Cunha; and many smaller islands. The tallest peaks rival Mt. Everest. That’s a lot of hiding places for who knows what - with space leftover for sunken cities & continents.

Explorations started in 1988 revealed the lost city of Dwarka to be no fable, but solidly real. Legend told that Dwarka sunk beneath the waves 10,000 years ago. Archaeologists didn’t think so. They believed civilization in India couldn’t be older than 3,000 to 6,000 years. Seventy feet below sea-level the ruins of ancient Dwarka; walls, street grids, broken buildings, and copper coins dating to 9,500 years proved them wrong.

Every year new discoveries in Ocean turn fable into fact.

Land rises and falls at Ocean’s whim. Any standard of sea-level is temporary. Tides and currents that seem permanent are not permanent. All is transitory. Twenty or more volcanoes erupt on any given day. Eighty or more erupt every year. Each produce astonishing sustained blasts of near thermonuclear heat that alter currents, weather, and climate.

The works of man are trivial by comparison.

There is grace in humble wondering and honor in honest searching. These words from Psalm 107, King James Bible, honor those who seek:

They that go down to the sea in ships’ And occupy their business in great waters. These men see the works of the Lord. And his wonders of the deep.

By K. L. Shipley

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