OCEAN ABYSSES.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 3

OCEAN ABYSSES.

The news that H.M. surveying ship Fantome during, a recent cruise between Albany and Hobart, discovered a depth of just over 3000 fathoms, or nearly three ' and a-half miles, has more than a passing interest. The Fantome's 821b deep-sea lead, with the weight of .the wire line to.aid it, took more than half an hour to reach the sea bottom. This tremendous depth, however, is far outdone by" that of two amazing chasms in the oceanfloor in the South Pacific, comparatively close to our own shores. Just to the eastward of the Kermadec Islands, less than five hundred miles to the north-east of the New Zealand coast, the sea-bottom drops suddenly to a great pit, with an extreme depth, as recorded a few years ago by H.M.S. Penguin's sounding machine, of 5155 fathoms, or nearly six miles. This sounding was taken by the Penguin on one of her surveying cruises from Auckland to the Tonga Archipelago, and as she worked northwards she found and charted another huge depression, to the eastward of Tongatabu, with a depth almost as great. These two ocean abysses are now marked in the maps in deep blue as the "Penguin Deep" and the "Tonga Trough." Here, far down, is eternal stillness in striking contrast to the volcano - troubled earthquake - shaken shallows on the western side of Tonga, where Falcon Island and burning Tofoa He, and where new islands sometimes arise and old ones disappear. It is not easy to realise all that |is meant by a sea-depth of five or six miles. To say itp would take two of our Mount Cooks, piled one on the other, to fill the vast hole- and then leave room for another respectable peak on top of them before the surface of the ocean were reached is to convey but a very bald impression of the "Penguin Deep."—Exchange.