How Deep Does the Sea Go
It starts with a little idea…
Kit (child)“How deep does the sea go? Like, if you kept going down. Is there a bottom? I want to go in a submarine and see. Not a scary one. Mum can come too.”
Kit wants to find the bottom of the sea. An imaginary submarine can take him there—but his neat little drawing is about to get much more interesting.
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The bath question
Kit watched the last of the bathwater swirl away. “How deep does the sea go?” he asked. “Much deeper than this,” said Mum. “But there must be a bottom.” Kit drew a blue sea with one straight line underneath. “There,” he said. “We just need to find it.” He added a submarine. And two seats.
Down we go
In Kit’s imaginary submarine, Mum checked the lights. Kit held his notebook tightly. Above them, the waves shone like crumpled silver. Below them, the water stretched blue and blue. “How will we know when we get there?” Kit asked. “We’ll look,” said Mum. “And keep asking questions.” The little submarine began to sink.
The sunlit sea
A whale passed the window, bigger than the whole submarine. Its tail moved slowly. Tiny fish flashed beside it. “Is it coming with us?” asked Kit. The whale turned towards the surface. It needed air, just as they did. Near the top of the sea, sunlight helps seaweed grow. Kit drew a bright patch on his page. Still no bottom.
The light grows thin
They went deeper. The blue grew darker. The last sunbeams faded. “Is it night already?” Kit asked. “No. The water above us keeps more and more sunlight from reaching down here.” Mum switched on the submarine’s lamps. Their beams reached ahead into the dark. Kit leaned towards the window. Something tiny flickered beyond the light.
Lights that are alive
Then another light flickered. And another. “Stars,” whispered Kit. “Living things,” said Mum. “Some deep-sea animals make their own light.” Little fish drifted past with pinpricks along their sides. Far below the surface, no sunlight reaches the water at all. The submarine’s strong hull kept the sea outside. Kit drew dots in his dark blue sea. It wasn’t empty after all.
Something below
The submarine slowed. Something pale lay below them. It grew wider in the lamps, then wider still. “The bottom,” breathed Kit. They hovered above soft mud, scattered stones and a small sea cucumber. Kit put his pencil on the straight line in his notebook. Then the lamps swept to one side. The ground dropped away.
The bottom has hills
“Wait,” said Kit. “There’s more sea under there.” Beyond the slope, a valley disappeared into darkness. “The seabed has hills and valleys,” said Mum. “It isn’t the same depth everywhere.” Kit rubbed out his straight line. He drew a slope. Then a dip. Then another hill. “We found the bottom here,” he said. “But that’s not the bottom everywhere.”
Measuring with an echo
The submarine sent a sound down towards the seabed. An echo came back. “This is sonar,” said Mum. “The time an echo takes helps us work out the depth.” A line on the screen traced the slope below them. The deepest known part of the ocean is nearly eleven kilometres down. Kit looked at his tiny drawing. “I think I need a bigger page.”
A bigger question
Back beside the bath, Kit finished his picture. Sunlight at the top. Little lights in the dark. A seabed that rose and dipped. The submarine was only imaginary. The sea was really that extraordinary. “So,” said Mum, “did you find your answer?” “Different depths in different places,” said Kit. Then he turned the page. “Now, what lives in the deepest bit?” The bath plug could wait.
An illustrated example of the experience we are developing. Talebrix is still in development; this book was not printed by the device.