Las Vegas Review-Journal

Deep sea explorer Walsh, who made historic trip in ’60, dies

- By Mark Thiessen

Retired Navy Capt. Don Walsh, an explorer who in 1960 was part of a two-man crew that made the first voyage to the deepest part of the ocean — to the “snuff-colored ooze” at the bottom of the Pacific’s Mariana Trench — has died. He was 92.

Walsh died Nov. 12 at his home in Myrtle Point, Oregon, his daughter, Elizabeth Walsh, said Monday.

In January 1960, Walsh, then a

U.S. Navy lieutenant, and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard were sealed inside a 150-ton, steel-hulled bathyscaph­e named the Trieste to attempt to dive nearly seven miles below the surface. A bathyscaph­e is a self-propelled submersibl­e used in deep-sea dives.

The two men descended to 35,800 feet in the Challenger Deep, the deepest point of the Earth’s oceans, part of the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles off Guam in the Pacific.

After a descent of about five hours, the steel-hulled submersibl­e touched down on what the log described as the “snuff-colored ooze” of silt stewed up by the ship reaching the bottom.

When they reached the seafloor, the two men shook hands.

“I knew we were making history,” Walsh told The World newspaper of Coos Bay, Oregon, in 2010. “It was a special day.”

After spending 20 minutes on the floor and confirming there was life there when a fish swam by, they began their 3 1/2-hour ascent.

“We were astounded to find higher marine life forms down there at all,” Piccard said before his death in 2008.

Piccard designed the ship with his father, and they sold it to the U.S. Navy in 1958. Walsh was temporaril­y serving in San Diego when Piccard requested volunteers to operate the vehicle. Walsh stepped forward.

“There was an opportunit­y to pioneer,” Walsh told The World. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to be doing, but I knew I’d be at sea. It wasn’t until later they told us what they had in store.”

He served in the Navy for 24 years, retiring with the rank of captain and serving on various submarines.

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