January 23 – Anniversary of a Record-Setting Dive

nPostednon January 23, 2016

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nOnnthis date in 1960, humans set a depth record by using the bathyscaphenUSS Trieste to descendnto 35,797 feet (almost 11 thousand meters!) in the Pacific Ocean.

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nU.S.nNavy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard went tonthe bottom of “Challenger Deep,” the deepest part of the deepestntrench in the ocean. It took them nearly five hours to get there, andnthe two men spent twenty minutes down there at the bottommost part ofnthe ocean.

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nFiftynyears later, in 2010, Don Walsh was amazed that nobody had evernrepeated the feat of going to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Henpointed out that almost a thousand people have been to the top ofnEverest, hundreds of people have been in outer space, and twelvenpeople have walked on the moon (and even more people have been out asnfar as the moon, without actually landing on it).

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nButnin fifty years, it was still just two guys who had been to the bottomnof the ocean. Nobody else had even attempted it!

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Now,nthough, there has been a third person who’s done the deed: In 2012nJames Cameron, the movie director of smash hits Titanic andnAvatar, partnered with National Geographic to take ansubmersible down to bottom of the Mariana Trench.

nWhen he arrived atnthe bottom, he typed out the words “All systems OK.”

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nInguess in those 52 years, technology had improved; Cameron’s trip tooknabout two and a half hours to reach the bottom. He was able to spendnthree hours collecting samples for biologists and geologists tonstudy, and the sub had sophisticated 3-D cameras employed. The ascentntook a bit less time than the descent had. (By the way, the submarinenhad the ability to sustain life for 56 hours, so there was plenty of nair and power to spare!)

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nDidnyou know…?

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nThen Triesten encounteredn a bit of a problem: At a depth of about 30,000 feet, one of then outer Plexiglas window panes cracked, and the entire vessel shook.n Yi-i-ikes! Walsh explained that, since the window was not on an pressure boundary, they thought it was all right to carry on to then bottom.

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nWhatn do you do at the bottom of the ocean? The Triesten crew saw a glimpse of some fish, probably sole, flounder, orn halibut, and discovered that the bottom was made up of diatomaceousn ooze. They couldn’t see a lot, because their ship had kicked up an lot of stuff (sand? ooze?). They ate chocolate bars, because theirn trip had already taken a long time, and they still had more thann three hours to go back to the surface.

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nEvenn though the journey was a project of the U.S. Navy, the submersiblen was designed by Swiss designer Auguste Piccard (father of then aquanaut Jacques Piccard), and it was built by an Italian company.

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nEvenn though the feat got little attention, compared to ascents ton Everest, treks to the North and South Poles, and journeys inton space, Starn Trek didn pay homage to Trieste. First, in Starn Trek: The Next Generation,n the ship’s captain Jean-Luc Picard was said to have been named aftern either Auguste or Jacques Piccard. Second, one of the starships wasn called the U.S.S.n Trieste.

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nSomen may wonder why a movie director is daring to go to the bottommostn point of the ocean. Actually, James Cameron was quite the oceann explorer. He had been interested in oceanography since he was an child, and he has made over 70 deep-sea submersible dives. Actually,n 33 of those dives were to the wreckage of the Titanic,n the subject of one of Cameron’s hits!

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