This blog was co-written by Vincent Leggett, the Admiral of the Chesapeake and founder and president of Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, and Deedee Strum, the chief administrative officer of Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy.
The Chesapeake Bay is a thriving region of diverse ecosystems and communities. Home to charismatic species such as the horseshoe crab, blue crab and the osprey, this bay is the largest estuary in the United States and third largest in the world. The Chesapeake watershed spans six states and Washington, D.C, and is recognized as the ancestral lands of the Piscataway, Anacostan, Monacan and other Indigenous peoples. The region is also home to historically Black communities that have shaped fishing, aquaculture and maritime industries for centuries.
Today, pollution from fertilizer runoff, wastewater overflows, and coastal development makes its way into the Bay and reduces the Bay’s ecosystem productivity and impacts surrounding communities. This situation has forced many Black families away from the coast and out of maritime livelihoods.
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One of the most notable groups leading the preservation of the Chesapeake Bay region’s maritime and aquaculture relationship to African American culture and generational knowledge and stewardship practices is Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation (BoCF). BoCF is dedicated to sharing the Black maritime experience within the Chesapeake Bay watershed by providing a broad range of historical and experiential learning activities through quality research and culturally diverse programs to inform and inspire all people.
One of the pillars of Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation is cultivating the next generation of stewards and leaders starting with their own backyard. In a collaborative project between Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation and Ocean Conservancy called “Bay to Sea,” BoCF created and led a poster competition in partnership with Edmund Burke High School to elevate local conservation actions that reflect the importance of youth leadership in conservation and in mitigating climate change.
At Ocean Conservancy, our advocacy for the global ocean is predicated on our commitment to ocean justice—which we define as “the fair and equitable distribution of both the benefits of the ocean’s bounty and the burdens of its complex care.” This is an essential component of our vision: “A healthier ocean protected by a more just world.”
At Edmund Burke High School each grade level had a year-long theme that was embedded in their curriculum. For the 11th grade class, the theme was environmental justice. For this inaugural poster competition, the students were asked to illustrate themes of environmental justice and saving the Chesapeake Bay. The winners of this competition capture the disproportionate negative environmental impacts on lower-income communities and communities of color in the Chesapeake region from degraded water quality and plastic pollution. Drawing attention to this connection between justice and environmental degradation is critical to protecting communities and the Bay.
The posters included in the joint competition reflect the skills and attitudes that are needed to solve environmental issues like water pollution, injustice, and the ongoing climate crisis. The Chesapeake Bay is a regional local icon; it should serve as an example globally of environmental justice and solutions to environmental issues like climate change and ocean pollution. By providing local context and stories through posters and other resources, educators and advocates can better inform approaches in the Bay and other local, national and international fora to address these problems.
The Bay-to-Sea Poster Awards:
The Bay-to-Sea Poster Competition is an example of effective collaboration to identify the problems affecting the ocean and showcase their solutions. The competition demonstrates how trust between conservation stewards and organizations are working at different scales, local to international, can co-produce projects, spread awareness and create solutions to coastal-ocean problems that have more impact than working alone. As partners, we share a commitment to coastal communities, healthy waterways and ocean justice. We are stronger when we work together.
Want to know more about Blacks of the Chesapeake? Learn more here. Follow on LinkedIn.
The post Awareness and Education: Bay-to-Sea Poster Competition appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.
Ocean Acidification
Dr Heidarzadeh’s TV interview with SkyNews on the massive M7.7 Panama earthquake on 9 October 2026
Dr Heidarzadeh’s TV interview with SkyNews on the massive M7.7 Panama earthquake on 9 October 2026. Click here for the full story.
Dr Heidarzadeh’s TV interview with SkyNews on the massive M7.7 Panama earthquake on 9 October 2026
Our ocean is an incredibly vast and mysterious place. And there is no place where that is more evident than the deepest ocean area in the world: the legendary Mariana Trench. Located east of the Philippines, the Mariana Trench lies in the Mariana Archipelago in the western portion of the North Pacific. The greater area of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument is made up of more than 95,000 square miles of ocean. Beneath these waters lie incredibly complex aggregations of submerged islands and volcanoes … and of course, an astoundingly massive trench.
Dive in with us to have your biggest questions answered about the famed Mariana Trench.
How deep is the Mariana Trench?
The deepest part of the Mariana Trench, known as Challenger Deep, is almost 36,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. For context, Mount Everest is about 29,000 feet above sea level, so the Mariana Trench is about 7,000 feet deeper than Mount Everest is tall. For one more comparison, the RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet below sea level. The Challenger Deep is in waters nearly three times deeper than this ship’s final resting place.
Due to its enormous size, the Mariana Trench has at times been affectionately nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the ocean. This is certainly a picturesque image, but don’t let the mammoth size of this U.S. national terrestrial park fool you into thinking the Mariana Trench matches its size. The trench’s footprint is estimated to be 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon’s, and to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep, you’d need to descend through almost six Grand Canyons stacked on top of each other before you’d reach the seafloor.
Oh … and did we mention it’s five times wider than it is deep? It’s about 43 miles wide!
What is Challenger Deep, and how long would it take to reach it?
Challenger Deep is the deepest point of the Mariana Trench. Fewer than 30 people have ever journeyed to this area. The trek below the surface is long, dark and time-consuming, and it’s not an expedition considered lightly by scientists and explorers.
The first people to descend into the depths of this area in 1960 were oceanographers Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, and it took them close to five hours to reach Challenger Deep. Since then, more advanced submersibles have been created, but it still takes two to four hours for modern vessels to reach such depths. For example, explorer and filmmaker James Cameron reached the seafloor in a little more than 2.5 hours in the first documented solo submarine dive to the area, and it took oceanographer Dr. Dawn Wright about four hours in 2022. It is crucial that these submersibles descend slowly and steadily beneath the surface, as the immense water pressure compounds with every mile a submersible descends. Speaking of pressure …
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What is the water pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench?
If you thought the depth of the Mariana Trench was its only jaw-dropping feature, think again. Water pressure is one of the most important factors affecting deep-sea life. In the ocean, pressure increases by one atmosphere for every 33 feet (10 meters) of depth. One atmosphere (a unit of measurement for pressure equivalent to average air pressure at sea level) is equal to about 14.7 pounds per square inch (PSI), which is the approximate standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. If you were to convert atmospheric pressure into weight, one atmosphere is about the weight of a bowling ball. Stay with me, friends.
If a vessel were to dive 2,000 feet below the surface, the pressure would equal that of 60 bowling balls stacked atop every square inch of that submersible. But 60 bowling balls is simply nothing compared to the pressure in the Mariana Trench. The atmospheric pressure at the depths of Challenger Deep is equal to about 16,000 PSI. That pressure is about the same as the weight of an entire full-grown elephant on every square inch of a submersible!
Need a more extreme comparison? If a human were to be placed at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the pressure would be equal to that of 50 jumbo jets piled on top of a person!
Do any animals live in the Mariana Trench?
The depths of the Mariana Trench come with immense pressure and extreme darkness, but somehow, life finds a way to survive. Organisms that live at an extreme depth, like that of Challenger Deep, have to be highly adapted to low temperatures (typically just above freezing), high pressure and virtually no light at all.
Species found in the depths of the Mariana Trench might look vastly different from animals from other ocean depths because their anatomy has been refined to thrive in harsh conditions. At such great depths, these animals typically depend on chemosynthesis (using nutrient-rich waters being pumped out of hydrothermal vents) or descending detritus (dead matter that has fallen from higher parts of the ocean) for food, such as whale falls. Just a handful of these animals include species of octopuses and squids, sea cucumbers, amphipods, sea jellies, shrimp, sea worms and some wild-looking fish!
In 2025, more than 7,000 new species were discovered in the Mariana Trench, including the hadal snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei). This is the deepest-dwelling fish currently known to science. Now, the fish has been dubbed “the Mariana snailfish.”
How was the Mariana Trench formed?
The process by which the Mariana Trench was created is a geologically fascinating one known as subduction. On the Earth’s surface, there are thin plates that cover the planet’s mantle, which is made of molten rock. If two of these plates collide, one pushes down into the Earth’s mantle while the other is pushed over the bottom plate. When this happens, a trench is formed from the drag of the bottom plate. This process can sometimes create incredibly strong earthquakes. The plates that forged the Mariana Trench’s creation are estimated to be up to approximately 180 million years old.
This trench was unknown to scientists until 1875. It was then that a team of explorers on the HMS Challenger measured the depth of the sea by simply lowering a weighted rope into the water. They were baffled when they measured that first portion of the seafloor to be five miles below the surface. And so was born the origin of some of the most daring deep-sea explorations known to mankind to date.
Is the Mariana Trench protected?
The Mariana Trench is in waters off Guam and the Mariana Islands. The region is protected from some human activities under its status as a marine monument. The creation of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument signified that international, national and local leaders all recognize the importance of protecting this area.
However, just because the region is protected does not mean it’s not vulnerable to modern threats to ocean health. Plastic bags have been spotted in the Mariana Trench during several expeditions, highlighting the far-reaching impact of the marine debris problem. No corner of our ocean is safe from the ever-present threat of plastic pollution. The reality of a changing climate makes the future well-being of wondrous places like the Mariana Trench uncertain. What’s more: More than 70% of the global ocean has yet to be mapped. And what we don’t yet know about, we cannot wisely work to protect.
It’s up to us to work together to defend our ocean, from the sandy shores of our favorite beaches to the deepest, darkest parts of the sea. Together, we can work to protect our ocean as a whole, which ultimately helps protect treasured places like Challenger Deep.
Find out how you can join Ocean Conservancy’s wave of momentum to secure a healthy ocean and a thriving planet, forever and for everyone!
The post The Mysteries of the Mariana Trench appeared first on Ocean Conservancy.