Day 530

There is still so much we don't know about the ocean, so many layers we can't yet reach.

Tonight we look at one such layer known as the Hadalpelagic zone.

Utterly untouched by human hand and barely imaginable it sits at around 11,000 meters down.

Exerting eight tons of pressure per square inch it is entirely uninhabitable to humankind.

But it is not uninhabited itself.

Their bodies like seaweed stretched too long over a frame of wire-line bones.

Teeth as large as a forearm and sharp like freshly cut steel had been found embedded in squid before

but none had ever found the creature they belonged to.

Until one washed up on a beach, bloated, grotesque and very much alive.

Its gaze roamed lazily about, digesting its surroundings with disinterest.

It had been on land before, admittedly before any of these bipedal things but it still remembered.

Walking would be difficult, the air was harder to breath now.

The bones in its fins protruded past the webbing enough for it to move for a short while.

Not enough to move too far from the sea but enough for it to hunt and feast.

With such an abundance of meat around it, it may never go back.

Or... it might go back.

Keeping such feasting to itself was inconsiderate and its kin hadn't seen so much meat for too long.

And so it lay there, still as death among the small creatures poking it curiously.

Waiting for them to come closer to its head.

All the while its tail beat deep below the ocean surface, signalling the others.

Deep, deep down, deeper than humans could ever hope to explore they slept.
Still as dead as they appeared they all rose slowly to the faint pulses sent by their kin.
Covered in the ashes of decades that had sunken to the depths with them they swam like clouds
constantly trailing the rotting debris behind them as they headed for land.
Just like the first they washed up like corpses and waited for us to come closer.

It is unknown how many of them remain down there,nesting for the next signal to come.
The massacre that occurred when the reached our beaches will never be forgotten.
The remains of those killed are still being discovered, almost forty years later.
Our sands are mostly bone fragments now, white as snow and sharp enough to cut through rubber.
People still visit them though they never last for long, their blood staining the ground crimson.