A New Zealand scientist has become one of the first women to explore the deepest point of the Kermadec Trench.
At approximately 10,000 metres below the ocean surface, the trench is among the world's deepest. It runs from the East Cape of New Zealand towards Tonga, and is formed by the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Indo-Australian Plate.
To understand more about it, a team of New Zealand and Chinese scientists joined forces to explore its depths - only the second crewed visit ever to explore the deepest part - and the findings are mesmerising.
Wellington-based National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) marine biologist Dr Kareen Schnabel was able to film some of the weird and wonderful creatures found at the deepest depths of the Pacific Ocean.
For example, she captured on camera an upside-down angler fish, swimming at more than 5 kilometres below the surface.
And Dr Schnabel is the first woman scientist to do so, along with a woman submersible pilot from China.
"To have both the pilot and the scientist be a woman, and that be a first, it really was an honour," she told Newshub.
Media on Sunday were invited to check out the Chinese research vessel 'Tansuoyihao', while it was in Auckland for resupply, ahead of the second leg of the voyage.
Dr Schnabel spent a month on the research vessel as part of a joint China-New Zealand scientific voyage to the Kermadec Trench, which at its deepest point is at a depth greater than the height of Mt Everest.
Using the Chinese vessel's Human Occupied Vehicle 'Fendouzhe', Dr Schnabel and other scientists collected deep-sea water samples, sediments, rocks, biological samples, and environmental data, from some of the deepest depths of the ocean.
Dr Schnabel and the submersible pilots spent six hours at the bottom of the sea exploring the Scholl Deep, understood to be the deepest part of the Kermadec Trench.
"When they flood those ballast waters on the sub and you start to sink down 10 kilometres deep, the next three hours at one metre per second speed and the light slowly disappears, and the blues turn this amazing dark blue and then disappear into black just as you've always heard... It really is a life-changing experience," Dr Schnabel told Newshub.
The Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong hailed the expedition as a "journey of friendship", describing it as "an important platform for China-New Zealand marine collaboration".
The first leg of the voyage was successfully completed on November 24. The 'Fendouzhe' vehicle undertook 16 dives between 5747 metres and 10,000 metres below the surface.
Dr Schnabel won't be rejoining the voyage as she'll be busy analysing her discoveries.
"We know that some of them are probably new species and that work is only just starting," she told Newshub.
It shows what international collaboration can achieve for science.
