Australian Geographic – July-August 2019

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Australian Geographic Society news and events

July. August 

Your Society

E

XPLORER, RETIRED naval officer

and guest speaker at our

2019 AGS Gala Awards Night

• Victor Vescovo – has broken the
  record for the world’s deepest sub-
  mersible dive. On 28 April, Victor
  made his solo dive to reach the
  deepest point on Earth: Challenger
  Deep at the bottom of the Mariana
  Trench (10,928m) in the Pacific
  Ocean. This was the deepest dive by

34 Australian Geographic

Come and meet the world’s deepest diver

Victor Vescovo

A

TEAM OF AGS-sponsored

explorers has set a new

record for plumbing the depths of

Australia’s deepest cave, Niggly

Cave, following it 395m down.

The 10-caver team from Hobart’s

Southern Tasmanian Caverneers

also found a connection between

Niggly and the Growling Swallet

cave system – which includes

Australia’s fourth-deepest cave

• under Mt Field National Park,
  north-west of Hobart. Expedition
  organiser Stephen Fordyce dived
  with scuba through more than
  200m of unmapped, flooded
  cave passages to break the
  record. He said the greater
  achievement for all involved was
  connecting the two cave

systems, something attempted

by cavers for decades. “One of

Australia’s most perplexing

underground puzzles has been

solved,” he said. The caves are

part of the Junee-Florentine

system, which is home to a

labyrinth of at least 600 caves

and more than 50km of

underground passages.

Another record-breaking dive

ADVENTURE

any human in history and is 16m

deeper than any previous crewed dive.

It took 3.5 hours to reach the

record-breaking depth in the

4.6m-long, 3.7m-high submersible

DSV Limiting Factor, built to withstand

the huge pressure of the deep

(about the weight of 50 jumbo jets).

Victor spent four hours there – the

longest time spent on the deepest part

of the ocean floor by a human.

This dive is part of Victor’s Five

Deeps Expedition, the world’s first

manned expedition to the deepest point

in each of the five oceans. The next stop

on this extraordinary feat will be

Horizon Deep at the bottom of the

Tonga Trench in the southern Pacific

Ocean. Victor aims to be the first

person to have reached the top of all the

continents as well as the bottom of all

the oceans. His final challenge will be to

explore the bottom of Molloy Deep in

the Arctic Ocean, which is currently

scheduled for August 2019.

We look forward to having Victor as

our guest speaker at the 2019 AGS Gala

Awards Night.

Presenting Partner/

Adventurer of the Year

Young Adventurer of the Year Conservationist of the Year Spirit of Adventure

Cavers Gabriel Kanzler and

Alan Jackson.

Friday 1 November 2019

from 6pm

Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney

Book your tickets now at

australiangeographic.com.au/awards/

Where:

For more details see page 39

2019 A

G S

G A N

When:

Victor Vescovo.