China, Chile embark on joint research mission to Atacama Trench

China's deep-sea research vessel "Tan Suo Yi Hao" (Discovery One) set sail this week from Valparaiso, Chile to conduct a joint science exploration of the Atacama Trench, under the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The Atacama Trench expedition is being jointly conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering and the University of Concepcion in Chile. The expedition aims to study the biodiversity and chemosynthetic ecosystems in the rarely-explored Atacama Trench, the longest undersea trench in the world.