This Animation Gives New Perspective on the Deepest Bodies of Water in the World

But it can be challenging to discern between lakes, seas, and rivers. Instead of just comparing numbers, MetaBallStudios created a Youtube video that offers an easy-to-understand graphic of more than 40 measured points to show how low you can go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5C7sqVe2Vg

The graphic is shaped like a hill starting at the Sea of Azov, which measures an average of about 23 feet, and ends at the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean at just over 36,000 feet. The hill acts as a scaled model for a visual reference. It also uses physical references. For example, the RMS Lusitania, which was a catalyst for turning countries against Germany in World War I when it was torpedoed in 1915, is 305 feet down in the depths of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. To illustrate that, the video compares it to the Statue of Liberty, which is 305 feet tall.

In another comparison, the Eiffel Tower’s height of 1,063 feet is compared to the deepest scuba dive, which was done by Ahmed Gabr who went about 1,090 feet down. MetaBallStudios also threw in the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa at 2,720 feet, for comparison to ocean depths. There are 28 depth points shown that go deeper than the Burj Khalifa is tall — including the more than 8,000 feet down the Perdido oil drill reaches in the Caribbean Ocean.

With this perspective in mind, it’s a little easier to see how so there’s so much below the surface of the water humans have let to learn about.