Tourists invited to see Earth’s deepest point
EVEREST? Tick. The North Pole? Done. Space travel? Tickets booked. But what is next on the list for the super-rich with a taste for adventure?
A UK-US travel firm thinks it has the answer. This summer it intends to take six “civilian” voyagers to the deepest point on the planet, billed as “the most exclusive destination on Earth”.
According to the website Elite Traveller, for £620,000 adventurers can go to Challenger Deep, the deepest point in the ocean, in the 1,580-mile-long Mariana Trench in the Pacific. More people have walked on the Moon than have visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is 35,853ft – nearly seven miles – below the ocean’s surface.
Only seven people have been there, among them James Cameron, the film director responsible for Titanic (1997). In 2012 he became the first person in 50 years to descend to the bottom.
“It was absolutely the most remote, isolated place on the planet,” he said at the time. “I really feel like in one day I’ve been to another planet.”
The travel company EYOS Expeditions is working with Caladan Oceanic to allow three tourists along.
They will require no formal training, but will have to spend up to 14 hours in the Limiting Factor submersible, which has already dived to the location five times. The descent will take four hours and divers will spend four hours on the ocean bed.
The Limiting Factor is the only craft capable of undertaking multiple dives to such a depth. The occupants of the submersible are protected inside a 90mm (3½in) thick titanium sphere but will experience no changes in pressure under water, the makers say.
Rob Mccallum, of EYOS Expeditions, said there were only two of the six available spaces left but would not be drawn on who had signed up, describing them only as “curious, adventurous and successful individuals”.
He added: “More people have been to the Moon – 562 have gone into space, and 4,000 have been to Everest’s summit. Only seven have made it to Challenger Deep. This is a rare and special opportunity. You’re stepping into the history books. It’s about as cool as exploration gets.”