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“I used one to explore the Sur Ridge oasis off the coast of Monterey. Besides building 3D maps of the ocean floor, a sonar’s backscatter can differentiate between rock, sand, and coral.” She glanced over to Haru. “Has this DriX been equipped with a sub-bottom profiler?”
“Hai, an Echoes 3500 T7, which can penetrate up to eleven thousand meters of water column.”
“Perfect.”
Byrd frowned. “Dr. Reed, what do you want with a sub-bottom profiler?”
“I’ve run into this issue before. Cursory sonar scans often mistake dense outcroppings of coral for boulders or a part of the seabed floor.” She pointed to the uniformly black spread on the screen. “The DriX’s sonar is bouncing off the canopy of that coral forest, making it look like that’s the bottom.”
“It’s not?” Byrd asked.
“No.”
“Then where is it?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. A profiler can penetrateintosandy seabeds, even through layers of clay. I’ve used this technology before to peek under the tops of dense coral fields.”
She slowed the DriX and brought the Echoes unit online. She manipulated the software to get a real-time feed. As she did, the screen split. One side continued to display the sonar’s ongoing mapping of the trench. The other half showed what the sub-bottom profiler revealed.
Both Haru and Byrd gasped. Phoebe remained silent, maintaining her concentration. Her only reaction was a slight widening of her eyes.
On the screen, the profiler displayed a cross-sectional view through the featureless black expanse. It sliced down into the darkness. Phoebe took a moment to focus the unit’s chirping, and the image grew clearer. It revealed layers of coral stems and stalks, all densely tangled and woven together. It looked like a film negative of a woodland deadfall. The resolution blurred out before reaching the bottom.
Phoebe released the controls and let the DriX drift onward autonomously. “That’s not possible,” she finally said.
“What do you mean?” Byrd asked.
“That coral forest is gigantic, at least a thousand feet tall. Which means this section of the trench is far deeper than it appears. Previous sonar scans of this area must have confused the coral’s canopy as the trench’s bottom.”
“But it was a false bottom,” Adam said.
“Then how deep does it go?” Byrd asked again.
“I don’t know,” Phoebe admitted. “The sub-bottom profiler couldn’t penetrate any deeper. It failed to reach the bottom.” She pointed to the gradient scaling on the sepia-colored screen. “We lose resolution after three hundred meters below the coral’s canopy, which is about ten thousand meters below the surface. Depending on how much farther down it goes, this section of the trench could be its deepest sounding.”
“It could threaten the Mariana Trench’s record,” Adam added. “That trench is the deepest known point on the planet, just shy of eleven thousand meters. This trench could be even deeper in spots.”
Byrd’s eyes shone, likely thrilled at the possibility of breaking that record. Still, his lips drew thin. “But as amazing as all of this is, does it offer any explanation for the clustering of quakes in this area? Or is this discovery just incidental?”
All eyes turned to her.
She shrugged. “I’m not a seismologist. But we’re not talking about asmallbed of coral. That’s a lost jungle down there, a veritable Brazilian rainforest. And at these extreme depths, it must have been growing exceptionally slowly. It must’ve taken hundreds of billions of years toachieve this height and expanse. It could even date back to the first corals, which appeared half a billion years ago.”
“But what about the recent quaking?” Byrd pressed her.
“If you’re right about this tight section of the trench being under stress, then perhaps the weight of all this coral—two hundred square miles of it, all pinched between tight walls—maybe it proved too much. Maybe its growth passed a threshold, crossing a breaking point where the underlying fault line couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Adam shook his head, unconvinced. “With the tectonic pressures we’re talking about, I can’t imagine that’s the answer.”
Haru stiffened in his seat, drawing all eyes to the screen where his gaze was fixed. “What’s that?” he asked.
They all gathered closer. By now, the dark expanse of oil had spread to the cliff walls on either side, but near one edge, that featureless landscape was interrupted by a jagged rip that stretched at least a quarter mile through the pristine coral.
Phoebe guided the DriX closer and followed that torn path. As she reached the end, a smoother shape appeared under the sonar scan, buried in that oily darkness. Even crumpled by pressure and nosed deep into the coral, the silhouette was easy to identify. The cylindrical shape stretched more than four hundred feet long, topped by a prominent conning tower.
“It’s the wreck of a submarine,” Byrd said.
Haru gave Adam a sharp look. Clearly his uncle was wondering if the submarine’s presence might account for the localized tremors. The tail end of the boat looked like it had imploded with considerable force.
