0 — 200 m / the sunlight zone
The surface is
a rumour.
Down here the sea still remembers the sky. Light arrives in long blue columns, warm enough to grow things, and every wave above is a story told second-hand.
Aurelia aurita / 12 cm
Scroll
200 — 1,000 m / the twilight zone
Twilight keeps
its own clock.
At dusk, a trillion lanternfish rise toward the last blue light, and the deep comes up to feed. It is the largest migration on Earth, and it happens twice a day without a single announcement.
Myctophidae / 8 cm
1,000 — 4,000 m / the midnight zone
The midnight
is not empty.
No sunlight reaches here. Everything you can see, the inhabitants made themselves. An anglerfish carries a small private sun on a stalk and waits for someone to mistake it for the way out.
Melanocetus / 18 cm
4,000 — 6,000 m / the abyss
The abyss is
a plain.
Beyond the last mountain, the seafloor flattens into a cold brown plain larger than every continent combined. A siphonophore drifts above it like a sentence that has forgotten where it was going.
Praya dubia / 30 m
6,000 — 8,000 m / the hadal zone
The hadal is
a seam.
Only trenches go this deep. The pressure would fold a submarine like paper. And yet: a small, pale amphipod goes about its day, which is indistinguishable from its night.
Hirondellea gigas / 4 cm
7,800 m — the bottom of the page
Nothing down here
is in a hurry.
You have reached the end of the descent. There is no seafloor in this file — only the sound of the scroll returning you to the surface.