The Czar has always been fascinated by really deep, scary underwater places like the bottom of the ocean, or like…well, that’s pretty much it. Millions of us have wondered about, like James Cameron. Although, to be fair, he built his own ultra-deep sea submersible and went there. The Czar has not been there, but likes to imagine it by Cameron’s description: “like a desert. More Reno, though, than Vegas.”

Perhaps surprising to many, the ocean is deep in many places, not just the Challenger Deep. The Challenger Deep is really deep, so deep in fact that the Czar would have to go to Wikipedia just to look that up. It’s so named because in 1972, Ned Ambrose of Secaucus, New Jersey, pushed his Dodge Challenger into it because, well, you had to understand what cars were like in the 1970s. They didn’t like to start.

From what the Czar can totally imagine, the ocean bottom is not the same in all places. In some places, it’s got really deep, soft sand. In others, it’s sorta rocky. Sometimes it’s barren, other times it’s got an amazing variety of life. Again, this is totally how we imagine it, but there’s probably someone smart out there who will say this is pretty much the case. We’ve been right about these sort of things before. Odds are good, here.

Deep ocean life is kind of cool-looking, with vampire fish who glow, and weird little eels with tons of razor-sharp needle teeth. The Czar also imagines bat-like creatures, but he doesn’t restrict his imagination to the ocean depths. Many of these things live around you, too.

Also, there are lots of crabs and shrimp, even at depths that would squish you into jelly, and then squish your jelly into jellier jelly. Science is like that. Oh, also cool: if you suddenly were to grab a vampire fish on your 6,000-foot Bass Pro fishing line, and pulled it up real fast, the change in pressure would make it explode violently when hitting the air. Of course, that’s impossible, but it’s fun to imagine it anyway.

Another thing to remember about the ocean floor is that it’s totally jet black dark. You can look at photos of it all you’d like, but those submersible craft all have lights on them. You would be better off picturing just a black square like we have up there.

So that’s all there is to life at the bottom of the ocean! If you are a Boy Scout and working toward your Ocean Biology merit badge, please submit your blue cards to the Czar for signature.