Which ocean is the Mariana Trench, Earth’s deepest known oceanic trench, located in?

The Mariana Trench, Earth’s deepest known oceanic trench, is located in the Pacific Ocean.

It lies east of the Mariana Islands, near the boundary where the Pacific Plate descends beneath the Philippine Sea Plate. This process, called subduction, formed the long, curved depression in the seafloor.

The trench’s deepest known point is Challenger Deep, which reaches roughly 10,900 metres below sea level, although exact measurements vary with instruments and survey methods. That depth is greater than the height of Mount Everest above sea level.

The bathyscaphe Trieste carried Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh to Challenger Deep in 1960, the first crewed descent. Later expeditions, including James Cameron’s solo descent in 2012, used specialized submersibles to study the extreme environment.