Adventure Travel : Scuba Diving in the Mariana Trench

The sport of scuba diving is an extremely popular recreational activity for tourists visiting tropical beach destinations. The thought of entering a world completely different from the one we live in and catching glimpses of really beautiful sea creatures is a wonderful opportunity that is not to be missed out for anything in this world.

There are numerous dive spots around the world that promise divers loads of excitement, mysteries and unforgettable sights. As an avid diver, you have a huge list of dive locations to choose from. But if you really want an underwater adventure that is incomparable to anything else, why not opt for a scuba diving trip to the Mariana Trench?

For those who have little or no idea of what and where the Mariana Trench is, here’s a little insight. The Mariana Trench happens to be the deepest point on earth’s crust and is located in the Pacific Ocean, close to the Mariana Islands and Guam.

Stretching for over 2550 kilometers along the ocean floor with a width of 69 kilometers, the trench is at its deepest at a point called the Challenger Deep. With a depth of 10916 meters, the Challenger Deep is a small valley that is located on the southern end of the trench. The pressure at the Challenger Deep point is said to be over 8 tons per sqaure inch which makes it impossible for normal subs and other underwater vehicles to navigate there.

The Challenger Deep was first conquered in the year 1960 by the Trieste submersible and the place was named after the HMS Challenger submersible which first discovered the place. Nowadays, the Mariana Trench acts as a passageway between the northern and southern hemispheres for subs that need to navigate between the countries in the Pacific Ocean.

Recently, the Mariana Trench opened its gates to let locals and tourists dive into its depths. Offering exciting underwater and deep sea adventures, the Mariana Trench is the only place on earth where you can see the most unique sea creatures that cannot be seen in anywhere else. These include amphipod, lantern fishes, football fishes, anglerfishes, sleeping sharks, dragonfishes, giant tube worms, fangtooths, blacksnout seasnails, giant isopods, glowing octupuses and firefly squids to name a few.

In addition to this, there have been significant traces of more than 200 different microorganisms that were spotted in a mud sample taken from the bottom of the trench.

An interesting part of this entire story is that most of these sea creatures live upto 100 years or more. This can be attributed to the fact that they hardly venture out from the depths of the ocean where fishing is impossible, have an incredible resistance to different extremes of temperature and pressure, and have different proteins in their body that provide high adaptability to the conditions mentioned above.

While on a scuba diving trip to the Mariana Trench, you may also want to dive in some other really exotic locations in the immediate surroundings. Cocoa Island, Apra Harbor and Tumon which are part of nearby Guam are fantastic dive locations and offer conditions less difficult than the Mariana Trench to dive in.

Tumon is known world wide for its magnificent coral gardens and calm waters which make exploring these under water marvels a pleasure. In addition to this, the warm moderate climate keeps the water warm and thunder storms are rare in this part of the Ocean.

Night diving excusrions are also very popular and enable tourists to catch glimpses of never before seen nocturnal sea creatures. Throwing off light in different shades and colors, these creaures venture out only at night, though it is hard to guess how they know when night falls as the area near the floor of the trench is always pitch black.

Octopuses are fearsome creatures that come out only late in the night and if you venture out on a diving expedition in the night, you may most likely spot several varieties and sizes of octopuses. Some of the more popular varieties include the dumbo octopus, glowing sucker octopus, the telescope octopus, the benthocodon and the big red. If you are lucky enough, you may also catch a fleeting glimpse of a giant squid like creature which has been seen before in the trench but has never been accounted for.