The day people reached the deepest place on Earth – level 3

23-01-1960

At the beginning of 1960, above the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, two men were preparing for a descent to the deepest place on planet Earth. They planned to descend to a depth of almost 11 kilometres in a small submarine, without media and public attention.

It was something that nobody had tried before. Nobody knew what was waiting at the bottom of the ocean and what the place really looked like.

On January 23, 1960, the sea over the Mariana Trench was rough. However, Don Walsh and Jacques Picard got on board their submarine that was just slightly bigger than a fridge. They started to go down.

At 150 metres, it began to get dark. Fewer fish were visible but they looked bigger. At 1,600 metres, unknown scary fish came into sight.

Five hours later, the submarine reached the sandy bottom of the Mariana Trench. Through the window, both men could see a 30-centimetre-long fish. It was clear proof that even in the deepest place on the planet, there was life.

Difficult words: Mariana Trench (the deepest place in the ocean), descent (the process of going down), rough (with strong winds and big waves), visible (when something is visible, people can see it).

What was the largest size of fish that Don Walsh and Jacques Picard observed during their descent?

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