−40M
Edge of Recreational Diving
HUMANThe practical limit for most divers — below this lies the threshold of another world.
02 // OCEAN · DIVE LOG
Ocean
Half of “the stars and the sea” is the sea. The nearest unknown universe is not overhead — it is beneath your feet. Ten thousand meters down, humanity has been only a handful of times. Now, dive.
◦ BIO DEEP-SEA LIFE◦ HUMAN REACHED◦ CN CHINA DIVES
SEA LEVEL · 0 M · DIVE
ZONE 1 // 0 — 200 M
Sunlight Zone
阳光层
The sunlit skin of the ocean. Most marine life crowds into this thin surface layer.
−150M
Whale Feeding Grounds
BIONear the bottom of the sunlit zone, great whales cruise rich waters to feed.
ZONE 2 // 200 — 1,000 M
Twilight Zone
暮光层
Light fails; creatures make their own. The unaided human body reaches its limit here.
−214M
Freediving Limit
HUMANHerbert Nitsch's no-limits world record — reached on a single breath.
−332M
Scuba Depth Record
HUMANAhmed Gabr's world record: 12 minutes down, nearly 15 hours back up.
−500M
Kingdom of Living Light
BIOAs sunlight fades to nothing, most deep-sea creatures learn to make their own.
−564M
Emperor Penguin Dive
BIOThe deepest recorded dive by any bird.
ZONE 3 // 1,000 — 4,000 M
Midnight Zone
午夜层
Eternal night begins. Residents here have never seen the sun; hydrothermal vents feed life that needs none.
−2,000M
The Sperm Whale's Hunting Ground
BIOA giant that holds its breath for two hours hunts colossal squid in eternal night.
−2,500M
Hydrothermal Black Smokers
BIOThe 1977 discovery that rewrote textbooks: ecosystems that thrive without sunlight.
−3,800M
Wreck of the Titanic
HUMANFound in 1985. The deep sea is the quietest archive of human memory.
ZONE 4 // 4,000 — 6,000 M
Abyssal Zone
深渊层
Near-freezing, pitch-black plains — yet the most expansive habitat on Earth.
−4,500M
The Abyssal Plains
BIOThe largest habitat on Earth — over half the planet's surface is plains like these.
−5,500M
Polymetallic Nodules
HUMANMineral fields grown over millions of years — and a new frontier of hard questions.
ZONE 5 // 6,000 — 10,935 M
Hadal Zone
超深渊层
Depths only trenches reach. Full ocean depth is the Everest of deep-sea engineering.
−7,062M
Jiaolong
CNIn 2012, China's crewed submersible reached 7,062 meters, joining the deep-diving elite.
−8,178M
The Deepest Fish
BIOThe Mariana snailfish — the deepest fish ever filmed, at home in the hadal zone.
−10,909M
Fendouzhe (Striver)
CNTouched down in Challenger Deep on Nov 10, 2020 — "the seafloor at 10,000 meters is beyond words."
−10,916M
Trieste
HUMAN1960: humans reach Challenger Deep for the first time — nine years before the Moon.
CHALLENGER DEEP // −10,935 M
This is the deepest point of the ocean.
No way further down — but straight up, it’s all stars.