Although initially measured at over 8000 meters it has since been calculated as measuring as being closer to 11,000 meters. Located at the bottom of the South Pacific part way between Guam and Palau, Challenger Deep is to be found at the southern tip of the Mariana Trench and is thought to mark the deepest point of the ocean floor. The expedition, widely accepted to have marked the birth of oceanography is perhaps best known for the discovery of an area known as Challenger Deep. What they discovered was nothing less then astounding. Their mission: to map the physical conditions of the deep sea. On board were a team of scientists led by famed Scottish Zoologist Charles Thomson. In December 1872, The HMS Challenger, captained by George Nares, set sail on a pioneering circumnavigation of the globe. Later when the sailors also saw its tail, it was judged to have measured longer than the whole length of the shipвЂ¦ With a small head, elongated neck and short body it propelled itself through the water using giant fins. Whilst travelling on a ship bound for the city of Nuuk in Greenland, Egede claims to have seen a staggering creature, resembling nothing he had seen before. Sightings such as the one experienced by Lutheran missionary Hans Egede in July 1734. Many creatures of myth and legend have since been found to be nothing but misidentified aquatic mammals Creatures such as the beautiful and beguiling manatee that gave rise to the sirens of Greek mythology.Д«ut there are also stories equally abundant, of strange sightings of creatures that that donвЂ™t quite tally with the known biology. The Sea Monster has been ever present in ocean folklore since men and women first gazed across the surface of the mysterious deep. Stories of hidden worlds and unknown creatures that may yet prove to be beyond our wildest imaginationsвЂ¦ Where at the surface we find the conscious mind, down below, deeply submerged, lies a shadowy world of all that is repressed.ДЄnd yet, for all the myths and stories that have sprung from the sea, fantastical tales of monsters and mermaids, there remain those that make no allusions to metaphor, whose place is not for the pages of the poet or the psychologists couch but exist merely as a matter of record. In Sigmund FreudвЂ™s Interpretation of Dreams, it is to water that the famed psychologist turns to elabourate his ideas. For some it is the very embodiment of freedom, for others nothing less than the murky fluid of their darkest nightmares. Through the power of myth and folklore it is a raging manifestation of all that is unknown. Since time immemorial, the ocean has held a powerful grip on the imagination of all cultures that have come into contact with it. And for some it is a world that will never be glimpsed in any way at all. But what lies below the surface of our planetвЂ™s vast Oceans is perhaps almost equally mysterious. When we think of the great unknowns, it is often to the heavens that we have looked, gazing out into the deepness of space in wonder at what lies beyond.

Call of the sea monster