Recently Triton Submarines in conjunction with EYOS Expeditions and Victor Vescovo of Caladan Oceanic held a press conference at the Manhattan headquarters of the Discovery Channel to announce an exciting new project. Vescovo will be piloting Triton’s 36000/2 submarine down to the deepest points of all five oceans.
The name of the project is The Five Deeps Expedition and it features the first commercially certified, manned submersible capable of going all the way to the bottom of the ocean — approximately 11,000-meters deep. The expedition will take Vescovo to places never before seen by the human eye. The sub, which is called the Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) Limiting Factor, will be toted around the world aboard a support vessel named Pressure Drop. The five deeps that the submarine will visit include the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic (8,648 meters), the South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean (8,428 meters), the Java Trench in the Indian Ocean (7,725 meters), the Mariana Trench/Challenger Deep in the Pacific (10,898 meters) and the Molloy Deep in the Arctic (5,599 meters).
Notably, Vescovo will also explore the Pacific’s Tonga Trench, which has been marked to within 100 meters of the Mariana Trench, and which could possibly become the new deepest known part of the ocean if there’s an uncharted dip in the bathymetry. It’s very exciting stuff. “If I do find that place in the Tonga Trench,” Vescovo said with a smile, “the first thing I’m going to do is call James Cameron.”
