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Close ✕Mariana Trench
A crescent-shaped subduction trench in the western Pacific, east and south of the Mariana Islands, formed where the Pacific Plate is subducted beneath the smaller Mariana Plate.
11.3, 142.2 · approximate · geological - present
On the world
- A place in: Descent: Surface to Hadal Zone · 3 places
Lines mark links and orders the records assert; no path between any two places is recorded, and none is drawn.
Connections
- contains Challenger Deep — The Challenger Deep is a slot-shaped depression at the southern end of the Mariana Trench arc.
- cuts through Abyssopelagic Zone (Abyssal Zone) — The trench descends from abyssal depths into the hadal, which is why the abyssal-hadal boundary at ~6,000 m is crossed within a single bathymetric feature rather than being a global horizon.
- instantiates Hadal Zone — The Mariana Trench is one of the trench systems in which the hadal zone physically exists; the hadal is defined by depth but occurs only at subduction features like this one.
Mission history61 missions · 1959 → 2026 · 2 planned
1145 objects · 280 located (1 withheld pending verification) · 865 unlocated · No relief basemap · marks drawn only from sourced coordinates