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myNotes
The great gash in the earth’s surface, deeper
than Mount Everest is high, lies in the
Mariana Trench on the floor of the Pacific
Ocean.
14 Here, in rough seas, Jacques Piccard and
Lieutenant Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy
undertook one of the most nerve-rattling 18
journeys ever made. On the morning of
January 23, 1960, the two men climbed
through the hatch and sealed themselves
into their steel bubble. At precisely 8:23
a.m., they let seawater into the air tanks
above them and began a 288-minute
descent down, down to the funeral-black
floor of the ocean.
15 To Jacques’s surprise and dismay, at about
340 feet below the surface, the Trieste came
to a stop. It had met a dense layer of cold 19
water (a thermocline), which blocked their
descent. After a quick calculation, he made
his craft less buoyant by releasing some of
the gas from the tank above, and the Trieste
continued dropping into the darkness.
16 At 1,000 feet, Jacques tested the Trieste’s
quartz arc lights, casting bright white beams
into the surrounding sea. Plankton streamed
past. By 2,400 feet, they had moved from
the twilight zone to the abyssal zone, where
not a trace of sunlight can reach. Staring out
at the grim blackness, the men felt the cabin
grow colder and colder. 20
17 Around 18,000 feet, the cabin sprang a
small leak, which a little later mended itself.
Now dropping at 200 feet a minute, the
Trieste plummeted beyond 23,000 feet,
reaching a new record depth for any dive.
At 29,500 feet, Jacques could feel the steep
walls of the Mariana Trench rising around
them. The Trieste had not been tested to
this depth, and he released some iron ballast
to slow her speed. The ocean floor was still
about a mile away.
Suddenly, the men were shaken by what
sounded like a muffled explosion. The outer
skin of one of the windows had cracked. For
a second, they thought they were finished.
Luckily the inner layer of Lucite held fast,
and not long afterward the Trieste came to
rest at the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
Switching on their lights again, they stared
out in wonder at the fish and slime around
them. It was certainly eerie and strange—
but at least there were no monsters.
As it would be dangerous to surface at
night, the Trieste could not stay long. After
just twenty minutes, Piccard lightened his
craft by releasing 10 tons of iron pellets
from the hoppers in the float. The Trieste
immediately began to rise. Faster and faster
she climbed, until she was moving upward
at 5 feet per second. Just over three hours
later, she broke the surface of the warm,
bright Pacific. The sailors on the Wandank
and the escorting destroyer Lewis hurried
to winch her from the water and release
her crew.
The amazing Piccards are still the only
explorers to have traveled, literally, to both
the heights and depths of our world.
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