Two days in one.

The dateline was celebrated with speed dating. Meike had the questions ready and we got 20 seconds to answer and chat a bit before moving on to the next person. And what a success! The good moods continued through the afternoon. As the sun went down the deckhouse was filled with shanty singing with Clara leading the way. 

We also crossed another special line, or rather, trench. At the surface the ocean surface seemed the same, but underneath us the seafloor had made a drastic dip from the roughly 4500 meters of the abyssal plane now dipping down to around 7000-9000 meters below us. The Tongan trench is the second deepest trench in the world with 10885 meters at its deepest point, very close behind the famous Mariana trench. The Tongan trench marks the place where the Pacific continental plate dives under the Indo-Australian plate. This convergence of continental plates has the fastest tectonic velocity in the world, of 15-24 cm per year. The Tongan Arc is a result of this impressive geological feature and the Tongan islands including the Vava’u island group is spread along it. Tomorrow early morning we would be there, amongst green lush islands of Vava’u after a week at sea.