Deep-Sea Diving: Jacques Piccard and Donald Walsh Pilot the Trieste to a Record Depth of 35,800 Feet in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean
Overview
The greatest ocean depth yet located is the Challenger Deep, a part of the Mariana Trench that descends to a depth of 36,201 feet—almost seven miles down. While this great depth has not yet been reached, on January 23, 1960, the Trieste descended to 35,800 feet (10,912 meters), the greatest depth yet reached by man. This descent showed that the technology had been developed to take people virtually anywhere on Earth and that, just seven years after Mount Everest had been scaled, the depths of the sea had been conquered too. The technology that went into designing and building Trieste was later used for other research vessels and military submarines. It spurred developments that led to the remotely operated vehicles that discovered the Titanic and recovered the treasure of the Central America in the 1990s.
Background
Slightly over 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean. Until the last decade of the twentieth century, however, more was known about the surfaces of Venus and Mars than was known about what lay beneath the oceans.
