VICTOR VESCOVO
In 2015, Victor Vescovo, investment-fund manager, mountain climber and former naval intelligence officer, discovered his next calling: deep-ocean exploration.
“The oceans are acutely connected to life on Earth, but 90 per cent of the ocean floor remains unexplored,” he says. “Nobody else seemed to be stepping up to push full-ocean-depth technology and diving, including our government and marine scientific community. So I just went ahead and did it.”
Vescovo’s DSSV Pressure Drop, a 68m converted US Navy ship, relaunched in 2018, along with its new Triton submersible, Limiting Factor. His goal was to explore the deepest underwater points in the world, map previously uncharted territory and allow scientists to study new forms of marine life at extreme depths.
The research vessel was designed with wet and dry laboratories as well as berths for 49 people, including 15 scientists, technical specialists or media, while Limiting Factor became the world’s first two-person submersible able to dive to the oceans’ bottom-most trenches.
Having conquered the Seven Summits, Vescovo has moved into ocean exploration for reasons both altruistic and personal. “What we are doing is more like a manned moon mission, with the excitement they used to generate, versus just launching robots into space. There is something special about being able to interact with an environment that is very difficult to access.”
During the 10-month Five Deeps Expedition, in which Vescovo piloted Limiting Factor to the lowest points of five oceans, research flourished. “It’s actually quite peaceful down there,” he says of descending 10,925m to the Pacific Ocean’s Challenger Deep, the world’s lowest point, in an area known as the Mariana Trench. “Even seven miles (11km) down, the bottom is teeming with life, including viruses and bacteria, the most robust life forms.”
The team collected an estimated 300,000 specimens and identified roughly 40 new species while mapping 694,117 sq km of underwater territory. In 2020, the Ring of Fire expedition explored trenches from Japan to the Red Sea.
Part Two, begun in February, headed back to the
Mariana, along with making its first dive in the Philippine Trench.
Like the other Ocean Keepers, Vescovo believes in open systems, so he makes his discoveries available to the global scientific community. He says individually financed foundations play a critical role in ocean research and restoration. “Since it’s 100 per cent selffunded, I knew we could make things happen relatively quickly and efficiently,” he says. “Governments have so many regulations that it takes much longer to accomplish anything. ‘Speed’ is the operative word.”