Science Questions

Is there any life at the bottom of deep ocean trenches? Bob in Essex

The basic problem with the ocean trenches, we're talking 9, 10, 11000 metres, is that it's incredibly hard to sample animals from down there. People have only been down there once and they saw fish. There are no nets that can go that far down but so far four species of fish have been found in these trenches but 90% of the creatures down there are holothurians, which are basically tubeworms. So there is a lot of life down there and there are also bacteria that live on the sea floor. The problem is that we haven't found most of it yet. It's not that it's not there; it's just so difficult to actually see it.

April 2006