Previous research in the Kermadec Trench

[caption id="attachment_3591" align="alignright" width="448" caption="Map of the area, showing the sampling locations of previous expeditions"] [/caption]Sampling in the Trench dates back to two global expeditions of discovery: the Danish research vessel Galathea II in 1952, and the Russian Vityaz in 1958. These vessels carried out 13 shots, trawling as deep as 9900m. There followed a period of several decades where the world's trenches were almost "out of sight, out of mind." However, this started to change in the 1990s, as scientific interest in the biological role of trenches increased - to discover what animals lived in the deepest parts of our oceans, and how they were adapted to cope with the extreme depths. [More]