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hadal (HAYD-l) - adj., of, relating to, or being the parts of the ocean below a depth 6000 m/20,000 ft.
Above that is the abyssal zone, 4000-6000 m down, and above that from 200-4000 m, is the bathyal. There are only a few places on Earth that are hadal, in the deepest ocean trenches, and there are enough changes in forms of life down there that a new term was needed for clarity. Coined in 1956 by Danish oceanographer Anton Frederik Bruun after Hades, the realm of the underworld of Greek Mythology/the god of that realm, with a root sense popularly connected to "invisible/unseen" (but possibly better connected to a sense of "seeing together" i.e. "uniter," as we're all united in death).
---L.
Above that is the abyssal zone, 4000-6000 m down, and above that from 200-4000 m, is the bathyal. There are only a few places on Earth that are hadal, in the deepest ocean trenches, and there are enough changes in forms of life down there that a new term was needed for clarity. Coined in 1956 by Danish oceanographer Anton Frederik Bruun after Hades, the realm of the underworld of Greek Mythology/the god of that realm, with a root sense popularly connected to "invisible/unseen" (but possibly better connected to a sense of "seeing together" i.e. "uniter," as we're all united in death).
---L.
