Massive icebergs up to 20km across dotted the ocean, while
humpback whales breached, chinstrap penguins screeched and
albatross lazily swooped around the ship. The crew complement
included marine engineers, electronics and communication
specialists, scientists, filmmakers, sonar operators, submarine
life support engineers, an ice pilot and a doctor (myself ).
Launching a submersible into the Southern Ocean is not
for the faint-hearted. To be prepared, the team practised the
launch-recovery system in the relative safety of Cumberland
Inlet on South Georgia.
With practice, a complex manoeuvre involving the ship, the
tenders, the cranes, the crew, the communications systems and
the film crew was fine-tuned. Mt Paget (2934m) and the other
mountains of the Allardyce Range towered over the team as
they worked in the ca l m water s of the in let. Li ke most v isitor s
to South Georgia, the crew paid their respects at the grave of
the great 20th-century polar explorer Ernest Shackleton near
the ruins of the Grytviken whaling station.
The Southern Ocean is home to Earth’s highest waves, stron-
gest cur rent s a nd most power f u l w i nd s. The ex ped it ion pla n wa s
to sonar-map the South Sandwich Trench while waiting for a
weather window to dive. As it happened, the weather window
came sooner than expected. Almost as soon as the deepest point
in the Southern Ocean was mapped, Victor decided to dive.
The launch sequence was repeated flawlessly in open ocean
and at 1.15pm on 3 February, Limiting Factor was on its way
down to the 7433m bottom.
The very cold water created some problems – a large ther-
mocline at 4000m prevented acoustic communications – and
the deck crew suffered in the bitter cold. But after a three-hour
descent, Victor reached the bottom, becoming the first human
to visit the deepest point of the Southern Ocean.
Y
OU MIGHT THINK there would only be emptiness and
desolation here, but patience and careful observation
revealed life-a-plenty to Victor, as has been the case
in the other trenches too. On video, amphipods – a type of
crustacean – can be seen darting around Limiting Factor, and one
of the landers filmed three new species of snailfish. Worldwide
more than 9950 species of amphipod have been described and
Dr Alan Jamieson, Five Deeps Expedition chief scientist, is
confident more were discovered in the South Sandwich Trench.
Alan is concerned about the human pollutants such as PCBs,
microplastics and lead that were found among the deep-sea
fauna. It’s a sobering thought that humanity’s rubbish reached
the deepest parts of the oceans before humans did.
When Victor returned to the surface, he had to be careful
not to come up under an iceberg. Fortunately, communications
were re-established when the submersible was above 4000m and
he was given the all clear to surface. Like the record-breaking
Mariana Trench dive that would follow nearly three months
later, the Southern Ocean dive was a spectacular success.102 Australian Geographic
AGYou might think there would only be
emptiness and desolation here,
but patience and careful observation
revealed life-a-plenty to Victor.
PHOTO CREDITS: GLENN SINGLEMANFOR TICKETS to the 2019 AGS Gala Awards, where you can
hear Victor speak, go to australiangeographic.com.au/awardsVictor is helped out of Limiting Factor (left) after completing the Mariana Trench
dive – the fourth and deepest of the Five Deeps. Soon after, he’s congratulated by
Captain Don Walsh (below) who, along with Jacques Piccard in Tr i e s te , was the
first person to reach the deepest point in the oceans.