Mariana Trench: US explorer completes deepest ever submarine dive

Developed by Florida submarine manufacturer Triton, but with much of the engineering work taking place here in the UK, the vessel was piloted to a record-breaking depth of 10,928m by US financier and explorer Victor Vescovo.

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/five-deeps/

The dive is part of the wider so-called Five Deeps Mission, an effort to take a manned submersible to the deepest points of the world’s five oceans, which has been hailed as an unprecedented opportunity to study the deep, dark trenches of the 6,000-11,000m Hadal Zone.

During the visit to the Mariana Trench, the team reportedly discovered a number of new species, including four types of crustaceans known as amphipods. It also detected sweet wrappers and a plastic bag: depressing evidence of the scale of the oceans' plastic pollution problem.

The project has already visited the Puerto Rico Trench in the Southern Ocean (8,376m), the Atlantic’s South Sandwich Trench (7433m) and the deepest part of the Java Trench in the Indian Ocean (7,192m).