Featured Image Credit: Caladan Oceanic
Topics: Science, World News, Environment
Gerrard Kaonga
While you might expect to find gargantuan squids, Kaijus or the Kraken at the bottom of the ocean, one scientist shared her bizarre find.
In 2022, Dr Dawn Wright, a professor of geography and oceanography at Oregon State University, said humans are ‘irrevocably’ changing the planet.
When it comes to exploring the deep sea, unless you suffer from thalassophobia (the fear of large bodies of water), it can be quite fascinating.
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But Dr Wright’s strange discovery proved we needed to understand our planet better to preserve it.
In a Los Angeles Times report, she explained the initial goal of her underwater research was to explore 'a previously unvisited area' of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.
She descended more than 6.7 miles in a two-seat submarine to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean where she found something peculiar.
“Sitting in sediment at the bottom of the ocean at the Earth’s deepest point: a beer bottle. It had traveled more than 6.7 miles to the darkest depths of the Pacific, label still intact,” Dr Wright explained.
“This discarded trash had managed to reach an unsullied part of our world before we actually did - a symbol of how deeply and irrevocably humans are affecting the natural world.”
Taking to X, she also reinforced her belief that we need to protect the planet better.
“Further evidence that we MUST as humanity do BETTER by the ocean and for the health of habitats that we ourselves share & ultimately depend on,” Dr Wright wrote.
The story has recently resurfaced on other social media sites, with users on Reddit remarking how unbelievable it was to find litter in the ocean’s depths.
“Yeah other people are thinking 'scary' or 'eerie' and I’m thinking 'depressing',” one wrote.
“That’s actually kinda depressing. Finding litter even in the furthest depths of the ocean smh,” another added.
While someone else commented: "You know if this isn't sorta the most depressing and realistic imagine we have seen.
"'Wonder what new discoveries such depths hold? Trash'."
And a final user penned: “On the one hand, one can't help but imagine the sequence of events that happened in order for a glass bottle to go from the surface to literally the deepest point on Earth it's possible to reach.
"One the other, man it's depressing that the darkest depths of the ocean - the last vestige of the planet - has been touched by the hand of human pollution."