There’s no way I’m smart enough to be a scientist, but if I was, I think being an oceanographer would be pretty amazing.
Some people are afraid of the ocean, but I love being in it and around it as much as I can.
And, on a side note, did you know that over 80% of the world’s oceans have not been explored?
That’s a lot of water!
People on AskReddit talked about what they think would be discovered if the entire ocean was explored.
Let’s see what they had to say.
1. 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.”
2. 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.”
3. 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.”
4. 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.”
5. 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.”
6. 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.”
7. Treasure.
“Sunken ships from all periods of the past.
And treasure.
And most importantly, the rum.”
8. Could be…
“The five ocean zones are as follows:
The Sunlight Zone
The Twilight Zone
The Midnight Zone
The Abyssal Zone
The Danger Zone.”
9. 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.”
10. 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.”
11. 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.”
12. 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.”
13. Lost archeology.
“There’ll be loads of lost archeology going back to the last Ice Age and beyond.
Human settlements were (and still are) often on the coast due to the abundance of food, and coastlines constantly get eaten away. We know of many underwater ruins, and most have been lightly studied by divers.
We can’t easily excavate on the sea bed though, so imagine the artifacts that lay buried. We often build on previous settlements as well, so I would expect if we could excavate the sea bed properly, we would probably be able to paint a far more accurate picture of early human endeavors. Maybe even uncover some mind blowing surprises?
No-one cares enough to put up the money to develop the equipment and expertise to do it though. Fingers crossed we one day get an Elon Musk type whose more interested in history than space.”
14. Big squid.
“Probably some pretty cool large squid species which is cool.
Also there are multiple reports of pretty massive eel like creatures in the deep ocean but no pictures or specimens have been found.
I’m hoping we find one of those before I die.”
15. There’s gotta be!
“There’s megaladons, there’s gotta be!!!
I watched that shark week Discovery Channel special they put out about discovering a megaladon with “video proof” like 10 years meant to spoof people, and I totally thought it was real.
I was visiting my home country when I watched it and was too scared to fly over the ocean to go back because I didn’t want to crash into an ocean with megaladons.
My husband had to talk me down off that cliff.”
16. Unsolved mysteries.
“People are talking about crazy monsters and stuff, but I’m just thinking we’d find a ton of missing ships and planes and be able to put a lot of mysteries there to rest.”
17. You never know…
“I have a dumb hypothesis that I love.
There is a phenomenon known as “Deep Sea Gigantism” where many shallow water invertebrate creatures have absolutely massive cousins at the bottom of the ocean (giant squids, giant isopods, etc). Well one species that seems to be missing a larger cousin is the octopus.
There are giant squids, but mysteriously no octopus. Additionally cephalopods (family which squids, cuttlefish, and octopuses belong to) have no known “maximum” size, and generally die based on when they are k**led or self-sacrifice for their offspring.
Lastly, if they had a longer lifespan, their high intelligence would allow them to be as smart as dolphins or possibly humans where they to live long enough. So why haven’t we found anything? Well there’s one thing that octopuses are well known for and do better than any other creature on the planet: stealth.
So what I’m saying is the Kraken is real and we should worship the Great Old Ones.”
18. Kind of a buzzkill.
“In order from most likely to least likely:
Jack squat
Plankton (known or unknown species)
Fish (known or unknown species)
Invertebrates visible to the naked eye (known or unknown species)
Something lost, unknown, or previously undocumented that is of broad public interest
Most of the ocean is unexplored because the ocean is huge and most of it is boring. Not the most fun answer.”
19. Still hot.
“I’m honestly hoping for mermaids.
Probably weird, deformed, fish-human hybrids but mermaids nonetheless!”
20. Little fish.
“Fish, mostly small fish. Inch long fish with teeth meant for eating other inch long fish that people will share close-up pictures of and say “this is why I don’t go in the ocean.”
Invertebrates ranging from familiar to beautifully weird. Probably some neat geological formations.
Keep in mind that while we haven’t combed over every inch of water, a lot of the open ocean is the ecological equivalent of a desert: most of the life is small and hardy, because being anything else risks starvation.”
21. Cool and terrifying!
“I wanna believe that we’ll find some type of actual Kraken or a giant shark or something.
I know we probably won’t but that would be cool and terrifying at the same time.”
22. I want to believe.
“Maybe the UFO’s that the pentagon has been talking about.
I think most of the released footage\photos have been taken at sea.”
23. Really?!?!
“A sponge living in a pineapple, a squid that plays clarinet and a sea star that would be hired then immediately fired by a crab who sells burger patties who also has a whale as a daughter.
And did I mention a squirrel from Texas?”
24. Caves.
“Giant tunnels that lead to pockets of air filled caves with it’s own weather system that sustains not only plant but weird looking creatures.
And more giant crystal caves like the one in Mexico.”
25. Oh, great.
“Illuminati bases and research centers.
They’re gonna develop a nuke and plant it in the earth and explode the earth’s inner core ending all life to start a new age.”
26. Maybe not much.
“Honestly, probably not all that much.
All the most vibrant and diverse ecosystems are going to be in water shallow enough that plants can get both sunlight from the surface and nutrients from the sea floor. Once the water gets too deep for sunlight to reach the bottom, it kinda transitions to the underwater equivalent of the Sahara Desert.
There’s probably a little bit of down there scraping on off volcanic vents or what washes down to them from the surface waters, and given the extreme conditions, it’s probably really weird and interesting life, but I wouldn’t expect the deep sea to have anything like the biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef.
Yes, we’ve only explored a small portion of the ocean if you count by physical volume, but if you’re counting by interesting discoveries to be made, we’ve probably explored quite a lot of it.”
27. Could it be?
“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.”
What do you think would be discovered in the deep, dark ocean if all of it was explored?
Talk to us in the comments and let us know.
We’d love to hear from you!
