A tiny golden king crab living within
an orange sponge in Zhemchug Canyon.
Photo: Warshaw/Greenpeace
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
People wait years for permits to raft the Grand Canyon. Michelle Ridgway just visited a much larger canyon in Alaska, one that most people will never hear about.
Zhemchug Canyon, 20 percent longer and deeper than Grand Canyon, is a T-shaped cut in the sea floor beneath the gray waters of the Bering Sea. On a recent Greenpeace-sponsored expedition, Ridgway, a marine ecologist and consultant from Juneau, descended into the canyon alone in a tiny submarine.
“I’d been through the Grand Canyon the year before and was expecting a real similar experience,” Ridgway said. “But I was humbled. (Zhemchug Canyon is) enormous.”