Imaging Deep-Sea Life Beyond the Abyssal Zone

摘要

The depths to which ocean life is found remained unresolved until the 1940s. The depth distribution of deep-sea fauna has since been categorized into the littoral (zero to 200 meters), bathyal (200 to 2,000 meters), abyssal (2,000 to 6,000 meters) and hadal zones (6,000 to around 11,000 meters). The deepest of these zones remains the most inaccessible and poorly understood of the ocean, partly due to the technical challenges in sampling it.