Deep sea landscapes are a new frontier of human exploration – here’s what we may find

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When we dream of landscapes, we might imagine rolling valleys or rugged mountains. But there is a whole landscape hidden from human view: the secret world of the seafloor.

Half of Earth’s oceans are more than 3.2km deep. Beneath them lie cavernous plains untouched by sunlight, vast gaping trenches made by Earth’s tectonic plates shifting, and ranges of underwater mountains on which no human has ever set foot.

We have better maps of the surface of the Moon than of these secret landscapes of the seafloor.