Scientists estimate that even with 1,000 deep-sea vehicles each visually surveying about three square kilometres of seafloor per year—the current average rate—it would take more than 100,000 years to visually observe the entire deep seafloor once. So far, humans have directly seen less than 0.001% of it.
A thousand deep-sea vehicles would sound like an industrial-scale exploration fleet. At the average rate achieved by existing systems, however, even that fleet would need more than 100,000 years to c… [+7594 chars]
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Original source: https://spacedaily.com/t-1000-deep-sea-vehicles-100000-years-visual-seafloor/