A research submersible in the northwest Pacific captured new imagery of life located more than nine kilometres underwater. CBC's Darius Mahdavi explains what researchers discovered on the ocean floor — and what it could mean for future deepsea expeditions.

A research team led by Chinese scientists has documented never-before-seen sea creatures in the Pacific Ocean at depths ranging from 5,800 to 9,533 meters. The expedition revealed new species of tube worms and mollusks living in the Hadal Zone, an area below the abyssal zone where sunlight cannot reach and pressures are immense.

These animals survive by relying on bacteria that convert chemicals from the ocean floor into energy, rather than using sunlight as in surface ecosystems. The discoveries were made in deep sea trenches near Alaska and Russia, using advanced submersible technology to withstand the extreme conditions.

Deep sea expedition reveals never-before-seen creatures

Well, this is exciting. Never-before-seen sea creatures at record depths in the Pacific Ocean have been recorded by a Chinese-led research team. Darius joins us now to talk about this. We've done a lot of discussions about space, but I love the- I was gonna say. Yeah, I love the fact that on Earth, we're discovering new things. So tell us about what people found here on the ocean floor. So these are different tube worms and mollusks that they were able to find deeper than we've ever found animals, vertebrates, I should say, before. Now, they may not be the most exciting animals that you've ever seen, but the fact that we can find them so deep is really what makes this discovery such a big deal. They went deep. We're talking, I think the least deep place they looked was about 5,800 meters under the surface, and then went down as far as 9,533 meters below the surface of the ocean. This is beyond where you'd get sunlight or even really anything that you'd expect animals to be able to use to create nutrients and feed themselves. And the pressure on them would be intense as well, right? Absolutely, yes. I mean, if you brought these animals up to the surface, they would not look anything like they do under there because the pressure would be gone and they would just sort of fall apart. They'd look very goopy. That is not something I was planning to say, but the other thing I wanted to mention, because sunlight doesn't get down this deep, these aren't, this isn't a food chain like anything we have here at the surface. I mean, here, I think people are familiar with photosynthesis. Sun's light hits plants or photosynthetic algae, bacteria, and they are able to turn that into, sorry, not bacteria, algae, and turn that into food. And then animals eat the plants and we all are happily ever after. So down here, is it bacteria that's creating that? Bacteria are going to be creating, and some animals are able to create, usually with photosymbiotic bacteria inside them, are able to create energy, not from sunlight, but from chemicals seeping up from the ocean floor. So things like hydrogen sulfide and methane are coming up and animals are able to basically split those molecules apart, and sorry, bacteria, are able to split those molecules apart and turn that into energy that they're able to use. And then that can get passed up the food chain. And so you get these tube worms, you get these mollusks and all these incredible creatures down at the ocean floor. Yeah, I mean, the mollusks really surprised me because these shells are able to withstand these incredible pressures. Yeah. Wow. So where exactly was this? So there's a couple of places that they went. So these are all the places where you can actually get down that deep. This is a special zone called the Hadal Zone. It's below the abyssal zone, which I think people are probably more familiar with, but it turns totally black. No, people are not necessarily familiar with that. It's the abyss. The abyss is black and this is below the abyss. All right. This is the particular one that they went to. It's up near Alaska and Russia. They were able to go down to these really deep spots. And just to give you an idea, we're going to go down that deep. This is the ocean that most people have probably been in. This you can probably get to with some proper equipment, submarine. This is where you'd find things like the Titanic. And this is where it is. These really narrow deep sea trenches that you can find deep under the ocean. You can hear there's a Titanic in the abyssal zone going way below that. And they needed really fancy equipment to actually get down there. You can see the submarine there being towed around. Incredible stuff. Notwithstanding what it says at the beginning of Star Trek, this is still kind of the final frontier down there. All right, Darius, thank you so much. Thank you.

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Breakdown