Implosion in the Challenger Deep: Echo Sounding with the Shock Wave

Abstract

Since HMS Challenger made the first sounding in the Mariana Trench in 1875, scientists and explorers have been seeking to establish the exact location and depth of the deepest part of the ocean. The scientific consensus is that the deepest depth is situated in the Challenger Deep, an abyss in the Mariana Trench with depths greater than 10,000 m. Since1952, when HMS Challenger II, following its namesake, returned to the Mariana Trench, 20 estimates (including the one from this study) of the depth of the Challenger Deep have been made. The location and depth estimates are as diverse as the methods used to obtain them; they range from early measurements with explosives and stop watches, to single- and multi-beam sonars, to submersibles, both crewed and remotely operated. In December 2014, we participated in an expedition to the Challenger Deep onboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s R/V Falkor and deployed two free-falling, passive-acoustic instrument platforms, each with a glass-sphere pressure housing containing system electronics. At a nominal depth of 9,000 m, one of these housings imploded, creating a highly energetic shock wave that, as recorded by the other instrument, reflected multiple times from the sea surface and seafloor. From the arrival times of these multi-path pulses at the surviving instrument, in conjunction with a concurrent measurement of the sound speed profile in the water column, we obtained a highly constrained acoustic estimate of the Challenger Deep: 10,983 ± 6 m.