This is a myth, and my heart aches for this show might have contributed to it. We have detailed maps of all the ocean floor, with more or less the same variance as our dry surface maps. We have been to most of the more interesting, extreme and dramatic parts of the depths. Hell, there are oceanographic channels that live stream from deep under on the regular. Sure, there are surely still some things we haven’t found, thousands of sunk ships too small to know exactly where they ended up in, or natural phenomenon we probably haven’t documented yet. But, on the grand scale of science, we know the ocean floor rather well.
This is a myth, and my heart aches for this show might have contributed to it. We have detailed maps of all the ocean floor, with more or less the same variance as our dry surface maps. We have been to most of the more interesting, extreme and dramatic parts of the depths. Hell, there are oceanographic channels that live stream from deep under on the regular. Sure, there are surely still some things we haven’t found, thousands of sunk ships too small to know exactly where they ended up in, or natural phenomenon we probably haven’t documented yet. But, on the grand scale of science, we know the ocean floor rather well.
Shout out to EVNautilus.
Here’s a neat podcast that talks about this specific myth.
I don’t think it’s a myth. It’s just boomer-era info that kept getting repeated until it was out of date.