JOURNEY TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN
The Five Deeps Expedition is an ambitious project that aims to visit the deepest sites in each of the world’s five oceans, with the goal of developing new technologies (including the high-tech submersible Limiting Factor), exploring and mapping the ocean floor and discovering new deep-sea species and ecosystems. It’s the brainchild of multimillionaire explorer Victor Vescovo – and it’s been a wildly successful expedition so far, having dived to four of these five trenches. The final trench, the Arctic Ocean’s Molloy Deep, is in the team’s sights for a September dive.
John Ramsay is the engineer who led the design team for Limiting Factor, a submersible rated to survive ocean pressure when as deep as 14 kilometres, and whose extreme capabilities meant that everything had to be designed and built from scratch.
You’ve never been that deep before – what was is like?
No. That’s the thing: Victor’s [explorer and sub pilot Victor Vescovo] dive was the third time it’s ever been done in history. It’s
