Explorer Dives Into World’s Deepest Trench in the Pacific Ocean- Finds Plastic Waste on Seafloor
Finding plastic residues in the deepest and darkest corners of the planet is probably the last thing to have crossed anyone’s mind. While there exists the possibility of finding a million other strange things, plastic is one humans are well versed with. American explorer, Victor Vescovo broke the record for the deepest dive while descending nearly 11 kilometers into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. His legendary feat was marked, not by the discovery of a magical marine creature, but by plastic waste on the sea floor, per BBC. A rather disheartening discovery.
Vescovo explored the Challenger Deep at the southern end of the Mariana Trench–the deepest point of the Earth’s five oceans, in May 2019. His feat was marked as the deepest manned sea dive ever with a record depth of 10,927 meters as his adventure lasted four hours at the bottom of the trench. The diver with a naval background was able to catch glimpses of unseen marine creatures. However, he found himself disturbed upon finding a plastic bag at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Vescovo said he spotted a plastic bag and candy wrappers while on his expedition indicating the threats of the artificially-made compound that has seemed to penetrate even the deepest corners of Earth.
The 53-year-old expert opened up to CNN Travel about his record-breaking pursuit and the aim for scientific discovery while also testing human limits at such great depths. “Going to the extremes I believe is a natural inclination of man,” Vescovo said, adding that it is, in fact, a “wonderful part” of human nature to push limits. According to the expert, this human nature “has helped propel us as a species to where we are now.” For better or worse.
Vescovo embarked on his deep Pacific journey as part of the Five Deeps Expedition and completed it with his final dive on August 24, 2019. He also visited great depths in the Indian, Southern, Arctic, and Atlantic oceans within a period of 10 months. In all his deep sea adventures, the expert diver protected himself from the high pressures in a purpose-designed, titanium-hulled submersible, the DSV Limiting Factor. He was aided by a support ship called the DSSV Pressure Drop. His final dive into Molloy Deep, the lowest point in the Arctic Ocean was yet another significant feat for humankind. It was the first manned dive to reach the bottom of the abyss and is located 170 miles west of Norway, as per the CNN report.
The entire expedition mapped more than 300,000 square kilometers of seafloor explored by several explorers who traveled over 46,000 miles across all five oceans. 500 hours of the expedition have been captured on film and will be used by Atlantic Productions for a five-part Discovert Channel underwater documentary series called Deep Planet. The feat was part of a bigger project aimed at surveying the water depths in detail with sonar-mapping exercises by the end of 2030. It is a part of the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 20230 Project. Meanwhile, the Mariana Trench was first explored in 1960 by US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard in a submarine-like vessel, bathyscaphe Trieste. Even film director James Cameron did the extraordinary and made a solo dive in a bright green submarine in 2012.