7 miles down at bottom of deepest ocean... and there’s plastic pollution
AN explorer has told how he spotted plastic waste on the seafloor as he broke a record for the deepest dive on the planet.
Victor Vescovo said he was left ‘emotional’ by the find after he descended further than anyone ever before into Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench.
At almost seven miles down in the Pacific, he found what appeared to be a plastic container with printing on it. This means it is likely that no part of Earth has remained untouched by manmade waste.
Incredible footage of the detritus, found alongside eels and snailfish will appear on the Discovery Channel later this year.
Mr Vescovo’s journey in a £27.7million submersible is only the third to the Pacific’s extreme depths. A US Navy submarine was the first, diving into Challenger Deep in 1960, and film director James Cameron descended in 2012 after getting the diving bug while filming Titanic.
After a journey lasting three-and-a-half hours, the latest trip reached a maximum depth of 35,853ft.
This was 52ft deeper than the previous best recorded by the Navy mission and equivalent to 35 London Shard towers.
‘I had an emotional response to what I saw on the seafloor,’ said Mr Vescovo, 53.
‘Here I am at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in this completely pristine and untouched environment, and out of nowhere appears this object which I knew in my gut was manmade.
‘It is unfortunate that, due to the sheer volume of people on the planet, the waste we are producing is now sinking right to the bottom of the ocean.’
Two years ago scientists from Newcastle University reported finding tiny plastic fragments in crustaceans within the Mariana Trench. But the latest find is much larger, with more research needed to identify what it is made from.
The Daily Mail has highlighted the scourge of plastic waste and pollution through its Turn The Tide On Plastic campaign.
Mr Vescovo, a private equity investor from Dallas, Texas, who is a mountaineer and served 20 years in the US Navy Reserve, spent four hours on the seafloor. He saw arrowfish eels, cusk eels with transparent heads, ghostly snailfish and what are believed to be four new species of shrimp-like crustaceans called amphipods.
After the mission, which was four years in the planning, Mr Vescovo said: ‘It is almost indescribable how excited all of us are about achieving what we just did. This submarine and its mother ship, along with its extraordinarily talented expedition team, took marine technology to an unprecedented new level by diving rapidly and repeatedly into the deepest, harshest area of the ocean.
‘We feel like we have just created, validated and opened a powerful door to discover and visit any place, anytime, in the ocean which is 90 per cent unexplored.’
He dived five times into the Mariana Trench between April 28 and May 5 in the Deep Submergence Vehicle from the Deep Sea Support Vessel Pressure Drop. The descents are part of the Five Deeps expedition, the first manned mission to the deepest point of each of the five oceans.
Mr Vescovo has already conquered the Atlantic, Southern Ocean and Indian Ocean. His next mission is the Tonga Trench in the South Pacific Ocean.