Into the Deep Ocean

21 Dec 1872 – 202547 items

oceansscience
Trieste on the surface over the Mariana Trench just before its record dive, with the destroyer escort USS Lewis behind, 23 January 1960. US Navy photo NH 96797. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Trieste on the surface over the Mariana Trench just before its record dive, with the destroyer escort USS Lewis behind, 23 January 1960. US Navy photo NH 96797. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Eleven kilometres down

In March 1875 the crew of HMS Challenger paid out 4,475 fathoms of hemp line near the Mariana Islands and found the deepest water anyone had measured. Eighty-five years later two men sat at the bottom of that trench in the Trieste. This timeline runs from one to the other and on to today: the bathysphere, the maps that showed the ocean floor splitting apart, the vents where life runs without sunlight, and the robots and submarines that went back.

How it is built

  • A century and a half at the widest zoom, with the Challenger voyage as a band and its route drawn on the map.

  • One day in hours: 23 January 1960, when Trieste went down, sat on the bottom and came back up. Zoom in to see it.

  • The whole map: the deepest point of every ocean, from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean, plus Bermuda, the Galápagos Rift and the Titanic wreck.

Follow a thread with the tags challenger deep, submersibles, maps, life, women and mining.

How deep is it?

Nobody agrees to the metre. Published depths for the Challenger Deep run from about 10,900 m to 10,994 m, and each note says whose figure it gives. The spread comes from sound speed in the water column, the pool that was surveyed and the instrument used; Stewart and Jamieson (2019) and Gardner et al. (2014) explain why.

Times are UTC; the notes give local time on Guam, ten hours ahead.

Items

  1. The Challenger expedition

    ≈ 3 years, 5 months · Voyage of HMS Challenger, 1872–1876 (main stops)

  2. First steamship across the Antarctic Circle

    Antarctic Circle, Southern Ocean

  3. Station 225: 4,475 fathoms

    Challenger station 225, Mariana Trench

  4. The Challenger Report

    ≈ 15 years

  5. ≈ 34 years, 5 months

  6. Beebe and Barton’s bathysphere dives

    ≈ 4 years, 2 months · Off Nonsuch Island, Bermuda

  7. The bathysphere reaches 923 metres

    Off Nonsuch Island, Bermuda

  8. Cousteau and Gagnan’s Aqua-Lung

    Bandol, Mediterranean coast of France

  9. FNRS-2, the first bathyscaphe

    Cape Verde Islands

  10. Tharp and Heezen map the ocean floor

    ≈ 24 years, 11 months · Lamont Geological Observatory, Palisades, New York

  11. Tharp finds the rift

    Lamont Geological Observatory, Palisades, New York

  12. Trieste reaches 3,150 metres

    Off Ponza, Tyrrhenian Sea

  13. Heezen and Tharp’s map of the North Atlantic

  14. The US Navy buys Trieste

    Navy Electronics Laboratory, Point Loma, San Diego

  15. Trieste dives to the Challenger Deep

    8 hours, 33 minutes · Trieste’s dive site, Challenger Deep

  16. The descent

    4 hours, 43 minutes · Trieste’s dive site, Challenger Deep

  17. On the bottom

    20 minutes · Trieste’s dive site, Challenger Deep

  18. Trieste touches bottom

    Trieste’s dive site, Challenger Deep

  19. Fifty-two years without a visitor

    ≈ 52 years

  20. The ascent

    3 hours, 30 minutes · Trieste’s dive site, Challenger Deep

  21. Alvin is commissioned

    Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts

  22. Alvin finds the lost hydrogen bomb

    Off Palomares, Spain

  23. Alvin sinks

  24. Project FAMOUS dives into the rift

    Mid-Atlantic Ridge rift valley, south-west of the Azores

  25. Life at the Galápagos vents

    Galápagos Rift

  26. Black smokers on the East Pacific Rise

    East Pacific Rise at 21° N

  27. Sylvia Earle walks the seafloor

    Off Oʻahu, Hawaii

  28. Titanic found

    Wreck of RMS Titanic

  29. The Law of the Sea enters into force

    International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica

  30. Kaikō reaches the Challenger Deep

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  31. Nereus reaches the Challenger Deep

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  32. Sonar maps the whole trench

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  33. Deepsea Challenger’s dive

    6 hours, 45 minutes · Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  34. Cameron reaches the bottom

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  35. Jiaolong reaches 7,062 metres

    Mariana Trench

  36. Nereus lost in the Kermadec Trench

    Kermadec Trench

  37. The Five Deeps Expedition

    8 months, 8 days

  38. Puerto Rico Trench: 8,376 metres

    Brownson Deep, Puerto Rico Trench

  39. South Sandwich Trench: 7,434 metres

    Factorian Deep, South Sandwich Trench

  40. Java Trench: 7,192 metres

    Java (Sunda) Trench

  41. Vescovo reaches the Challenger Deep

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  42. Molloy Deep: 5,550 metres

    Molloy Deep, Fram Strait

  43. Kathy Sullivan reaches the Challenger Deep

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  44. Fendouzhe reaches 10,909 metres

    Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

  45. The two-year rule

    ≈ 2 years · International Seabed Authority, Kingston, Jamaica

  46. 5,578 species in the nodule fields

    Clarion-Clipperton Zone (approximate)

  47. Titan implodes near the Titanic

    Wreck of RMS Titanic

  48. Coast Guard: Titan’s loss was preventable