An underwater voyage has revealed a network of creatures thriving at the bottom of deep-sea ocean trenches. In these extreme environments, the crushing pressure, scant food and lack of sunlight can make it hard to survive.

Researchers traveling along the Kuril–Kamchatka and Aleutian trenches in the northwest Pacific Ocean used a manned submersible to find tubeworms and mollusks flourishing at over 31,000 feet deep. The deepest part of the ocean goes down to about 36,000 feet.

Scientists have filmed odd communities of life flourishing deeper in the ocean than ever before. The chemosynthesis-based life-forms get their energy from chemical reactions, powered by gases seeping out of faults on the seafloor.