Did you know that more than 80% of the world’s oceans are unexplored? That’s a lot of territory, people!
And can you even begin to imagine the things and the creatures that lurk under the surface…?
What do you think would be discovered if the entire ocean was explored? AskReddit users offered up their opinions.
1. Creeped out.
“Big things, scary things, barely-but-technically-alive things, and a ton of mostly empty space.
Most living things clustered around geothermal vents and/or along fault lines. Oh and crabs.
They seem to be everywhere underwater, and I don’t mean the chubby shore-based ones.
I mean spindly creepy spider ones having creepy spindly spider raves in the currents of the deep sea waving their clackers around like Moby has just plugged in the synth.”
2. Gigantism.
“I imagine there is some kind of absolutely huge lobster down there.
Deep-sea gigantism is a thing, giant isopods, squid, spider crabs are all far larger than their relatives that live closer to the surface.
There’s also the fact that lobsters never stop growing until they die and do not suffer negative effects of aging.
Basically, I just wanted to talk about lobsters for a minute. Did you know lobsters have at least two pen**es?
Did you know lobsters attract mates by pi**ing out of their eyes?
Lobsters are f**king cool.”
3. Maybe not much…
“Not that much, depending on how you view it.
The oceans are mostly vast deserts, so to speak, in that there are very few life forms in the open seas. Obviously there are things out there, but compared to the shores or the reefs, they’re pretty empty.
The other thing is, once you go far enough out, the sea floor drops a lot and you don’t get sunlight reaching the floor. So there’s no plant life for a lot of it, and it’s pitch black.
But that being said, there are strange and alien creatures in the deep, stuff very unlike what we see on land or in the shallow waters. Plus, there’s the ocean itself – massive currents that affect the entire planet, layers of water with big temperature and salinity differences, most of the water won’t have seen daylight for hundreds of thousands of years.
I expect we wouldn’t find anything super new or different to what we see now. We will likely find some new species, but as to whether they’ll be drastically different to what we already know… Well who knows.
There might be interesting stuff on the floor itself – we’ve found new continents and stuff over the years.”
4. Exciting!
“Huge unimaginable forces of nature at the boundaries of the tectonic plates, where volcanic and subduction forces shape the bottom of the sea floor.
There are entire mountain ranges under the oceans, we have never seen. There are volcanoes.
There is life that lives independently from sunlight and it’s metabolism is like that of aliens from other worlds.”
5. Mystery fish.
“Have you heard of the mystery of the Untouchable Bathysphere Fish?
A lucky naturalist in a submarine described several species of unknown fish that are only known from his own detailed eyewitness account and some artist’s depictions of the deep sea creatures.
He was unable to capture them for study. So, whether or not these mysterious fish were real and out there still waiting to be discovered may forever remain a mystery.
The ocean is a big place. Who knows what’s living in the deepest and darkest depths.
Godzilla? Megalodon? A living mosasaur? The Bloop?
Who knows.”
6. Sounds like a movie.
“A rip in the bottom of the ocean floor that’s a gateway to another dimension where monsters come out and humanity must build giant robots to fight them.”
7. A whole new world.
“Undiscovered creatures, lost sunken cities and quite possibly a few lost nukes from the countless Broken Arrow incidents that have taken place throughout history.
Would not be surprised if there were alien craft as well given how deep the ocean really is and how vast it is. It’s quite plausible that aliens have crashed into the ocean and sunk to its blackened depths.
There is also a chance the depths of the ocean could contain prehistoric viruses and other pathogens that have been locked away.”
8. Lost no more.
“Lost Civilizations.
About 10,000 years ago we came out of a mini ice age. The oceans rose and flooded coastlines. This was the “Great Flood” we see in the Christian Bible and other religions too.
IT wasn’t a sudden flood as the biblical and other stories would have you believe, but happened fast enough that the story was told into legend.
Since a lot of civilizations are situated on the coasts, they were swallowed by water.
We would absolutely find lost civilizations under water.”
9. In the deep.
“I think there would be tons of species that we either didn’t know about or thought were extinct.
It would be pretty cool to discover a dinosaur of sorts right in the deep, dark ocean.”
10. Treasure.
“Sunken ships from all periods of the past.
And treasure.
And most importantly, the rum.”
11. Could be…
“The five ocean zones are as follows:
The Sunlight Zone
The Twilight Zone
The Midnight Zone
The Abyssal Zone
The Danger Zone.”
12. All kinds of stuff.
“Probably just a bunch of bioluminescent creatures and small weird looking creatures.
Also trash and maybe pieces of unsolved mysteries that happened out at sea. I’d expect to find some kind of artifact or fossil as well that dates back millions of years…
I want gigantic sea creatures to be real cause that’d just be cool AS f**k.
But sadly our friend blue whale will have to do.”
Now it’s your turn.
In the comments, tell us what you think would be discovered if the entire ocean was explored.
We’d love to hear from you!
