Peter de Kruijff

And it's just like a series of underwater ridges and trenches and it gets very deep.

It gets down to just past about 7,000 metres around one of its deepest points.

Wow.

So it's quite far down.

Yeah, it gets up to about 11, I think.

Of the Mariana Trench.

And this is actually over a rather large stretch.

This is over about 1,200 kilometres, which sounds, you know, obviously huge, but it's all within this trench.

Yeah, so it's part of this whole big program, a global trench exploration and diving program that's mainly headed by China's Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering.

And it's just about checking out all these really deep geological features of our oceans, like the Diamantina Zone, which just hasn't really been explored to these depths because they have this really cool sub that can be piloted by people and go all the way down to as much as 11,000

Yeah, exactly.

And I mean, it's pretty wild.

You probably don't want to think about the pressures at those depths, but it sort of feels a bit like, yeah, underwater astronauts in a way.

Oh, well, there's just so much.

I mean, I think, you know, we'll probably end up finding more sites like this as well, but you have these bones that just sort of have been sitting there for up to five million years.

Five million years?

The five-million-year-old one was an old...

old beak whale, Pterocetus bengule.

Most of the species here were beaked whale species.

They basically look like a cross between a dolphin and like a pilot whale.