Financial Times Europe - 17.08.2019 - 18.08.2019

6 ★ FT Weekend 17 August/18 August 2019

others are driving space exploration

where Nasa once led alone, today it is

companiessuch as Triton, in partner-

ship with wealthy adventurer-explorers

such as Vescovo, that represent the

engine room of underwater discovery.

“Big state programmes are large,

cumbersome and very expensive,” says

Rob McCallum, the expedition leader

and veteran of numerous deepwater

submersible operations. “Five Deeps is a

private initiative which is nimble, cost

efficient and very fast.” As a comparison

he cites the large teams and huge budg-

ets of Alvin, the US Navy research sub-

mersible operated by the Woods Hole

Oceanographic Institution, and the

French and Japanese versions, Nautile

and Shinkai 6500.

“Woods Hole just spent $50m to give

Alvin a tweak and its depth rating is

4,500m. The cost of a government

equivalent sub to LF would be some-

where north of $200m. By contrast

we’re a small team with a small budget

and we've been able to do something

that no government has been able to do

since 1960.” LF cost around $35m, a

fraction of the US and Japanese govern-

ment budgets for vessels capable of

going no deeper than 4,500m and

6,500m respectively.

LF’s pioneering forays into the world’s

nethermost regions will generate inter-

est beyond the worlds of exploration

and marine science. Military specialists

will have noted that it successfully

recovered an unmanned lander vehicle,

deployed to provide navigation and

communication data, record footage

and collect biological samples, stuck in

sticky sediment at 10,920m in Chal-

lenger Deep. That was the deepest sal-

vage operation in history.

“We’re strictly civilian, but it doesn’t

take much imagination to consider

that until three months ago, humans

didn’t have the ability to go below

7,000m, as neither Trieste nor [ James

Cameron’s] Deepsea Challenger has

been in operation for many years,” says

McCallum. “Now we have the ability to

reach any depth.”

As for LF, having served its immediate

purpose of diving the Five Deeps, it is

not ready for the museum just yet. Ves-

covo is selling Pressure Drop and LF,

together with the sonar and all of the

equipment, as a complete exploration

package with the ability to make thou-

sands more deep dives. Interested? Bar-

gain on around $48m.

Travel

Clockwise from

main: Limiting

Factor being

lifted after its

record 10,928m

dive; another

post-dive

recovery;

explorer Victor

Vescovo;

expedition

leader Rob

McCallum (left)

and physician

Glenn

Singleman; sub

technician Tim

Macdonald— Reeve

Jolliffe; Tamara Stubbs

its batteries, thrusters and buoyancy

modules to all the electronics and elec-

trical components, had to be tested in 25

per cent beyond full ocean depth condi-

tions at Triton’s pressure chamber in

Spain. “It’s all completely new when you

get to this depth,” Ramsay explains.

The only place in the world with the

facilities to test Limiting Factor was the

Krylov State Research Centre, the Rus-

sian shipbuilding research and develop-

ment institute in St Petersburg. Gone is

the familiar acrylic bubble used on subs

designed for much shallower dives. To

peer into the blue-black depths you

must press your eye against one of the

hull’s three small circular openings —

the alien’s face on the outside.

It remains a perverse fact that, 50

years after humans first set foot on the

moon, we know more about its surface

than we do about the ocean floor.

At a time of increasing ocean acidifi-

cation, rising sea levels, falling fish

stocks, worsening pollution and plastic

waste, this is a lacuna in our knowledge

of the single most important environ-

ment for our survival as a species. “It’s

the beating heart of our planet and

home to up to 80 per cent of life on

Earth, and we’re destabilising it at the

fastest rate in human history,” says

i/DETAILS

fivedeeps.com; nektonmission.org;

kensingtontours.com;eyos-expeditions.com;

tritonsubs.com

Deep

impact

Adventure| In his $35m submarine, investor

Victor Vescovo has reached the deepest points

of four oceans. Now he faces a final challenge

in the depths of the Arctic. ByJustin Marozzi

Humans have always been more

inclined to look up to the stars than

down to the ocean. “Space stuff is

highly visual, it’sson et lumièrewrit

large,” says Don Walsh, the naval officer,

oceanographer and explorer. It was

Walsh who piloted the bathysphere

Trieste down to 10,911m on the first

descent to Challenger Deep — the

profoundest depth of the Atlantic — in

1960. “Look up and you see space,” he
      says, “look down and you’ve got this
      opaque boundary at the sky-ocean
      interface. Put simply, I think getting
      people interested is a marketing
      problem. We don’t know how to tell the
      stories of the oceans.”

Almost 60 years after Walsh’s

pioneering dive to Challenger Deep, the

new generation of ocean explorers still

contrast the public’s thrill towards space

exploration with its relative indifference

to underwater discovery. As Nekton’s

Oliver Steeds puts it: “Sputnik, Laika,

Yuri Gagarin, the first into outer space.

Heroes for all of humanity. William Beebe

and Otis Barton, the first into the deep

ocean in a bathysphere off Bermuda in

the 1930s. Barely a footnote in history.”

That balance may be about to

change. While Five Deeps has been

operating at the extreme end of

scientific exploration, a number of

companies are beginning to blur the

boundaries between luxury, adventure,

science and exploration to make the

ocean depths more accessible.

Kensington Tours has partnered with

the Nekton Ocean Research Institute to

develop a series of exploratory dives in

the Indian Ocean in a modern Triton

sub, with hands-on activities on a

working research vessel and luxury

yacht accommodation. Next year, the

operator will take clients alongside

Nekton’s expedition in the Maldives.

Prices start from $250,000 for up to

eight passengers depending on yacht

availability and final itinerary. That is

aboutthe same price as a 90-minute

suborbital flight with Virgin Galactic.

“For those with financial means and

seeking first-of-a-kind adventures,

underwater tourism is very accessible

when compared to space travel or other

exclusive travel experiences,” says Jeff

Willner, Kensington’s founder and CEO.

From suborbital to suboceanic: the rise of underwater tourism

Kensington Tours in a Triton sub

I

f you happen to be walking along

the river Thames near Tower

Bridge next month,you might not

give the unremarkable 68-metre

ship moored alongside HMS Belfast

a second glance.

That would be a mistake. Look again.

Pressure Drop may not be the world’s

most elegant vessel, but it is surely one

of the most extraordinary ships ever to

sail into London. The clue is in the

strange machine suspended from the

12-tonne A-frame fitted astern. It looks

like a child’s sketch of a suitcase with an

alien face on its side: two eyes and a

mouth opened in apparent surprise.

Forget the classic cigar-shaped sub-

marine fromDas BootorThe Hunt for

Red October. Limiting Factor might look

like a quirky piece of luggage, but in

boldly going where no one hasgone

before — to thedepths of the world’s five

oceans — this two-person titanium sub-

mersible haswritten itself into the

annals of underwater exploration.

Next month, it will descend into the

freezing Arctic waters for the conclud-

ing mission of the Five Deeps Expedi-

tion, masterminded and funded by Vic-

tor Vescovo, an American private equity

investor and retired naval officer. The

explorer’s ambition is crystal clear: to

dive to the deepest point in each of the

world’s oceans.So far he has ticked four

from his list, beginning with the Atlantic

last December, followed by the South-

ern Ocean in February, and both the

Indian and the Pacific in April. With the

last of these, Vescovo set a new deep-

diving record, reaching Challenger

Deep, the profoundest part of the Mari-

ana Trench, at a depth of 10,928m.

The dive took three and a half hours,

slightly less on the way up. Add three to

four hours on the bottom, together with

deployment and recovery procedures,

and these deepest dives take about 12

hours deck to deck.

Any talk about risk and danger is

briskly swatted away. “Everybody

seems to want there to be scary

E

very week or two, as I stand

in a London Underground

carriage, a young commuter

catches my eye and offers

me a seat. I always decline,

although I have learnt to do it with a

mouthing of “thanks”.

Inside, I’m annoyed at the thought

that I look like I need a seat. I don’t.

I’m in good health and do not feel

a day over 32. But I find London’s

youngsters distressingly polite —

more so every year.

Perhaps you feel differently if you

actually need a seat. Possibly you find

Tube travellers horribly indifferent.

But from what I see on my twice-daily

journey, most elderly passengers get

offered a seat. I even occasionally see

what Oliver Scott Curry, a University of

Oxford researcher, called, in an

interview with the BBC, “competitive

helping” — several people leaping up at

the same time.

passengers are more or less polite

than London’s.

I did notice, on my last trip to Paris,

that stepping out of a crowded Metro

train to let passengers off did not give

me the right to be the first back on, as

it would in London, but perhaps that

was just a bad day.

I asked my colleague Victor Mallet,

who worked with me in London, is now

based in Paris and was previously in

Hong Kong, whether he had noticed

any differences. He said there was

nothing he could put his finger on,

although recently someone had, for the

first time offered him a seat. “I

assumed he was a lunatic,” he said.

I have been searching for a study into

comparative commuter politeness in

different cities, but no one seems to

have bothered to get statistically

significant numbers of elderly people

to stand on crowded subway trains

around the world, recording how often

they were offered a seat.

Instead, a trawl of newspapers

around the globe reveals what many of

you probably feel: an intense irritation

at the rudeness of fellow commuters.

“The lack of etiquette shocked me,” a

San Francisco Chronicle reporter said

this month of the city’s Bart network.

Priority seats were occupied by those

who didn’t need them. “So far I have

not witnessed any of these squatters

offer their seat to an old person.”

“Blocking the doors and playing

music on speaker are two of the most

common complaints,” Indrani Banerjee

of Kolkata’s Metro Railway told The

Times of India. And Swiss English-

language news journal The Local

reported that “People put their feet on

the seats, open their Tupperware

containers with homemade pasta

salad... and put on their make-up.”

Of course, there is bad behaviour —

leaving discarded food cartons, and,

worse, banana skins on the London

Tube, for example — but as public

transport brings millions of strangers

in closer proximity to each other than

they ever are to anyone other than

their most intimate companions, a

certain distaste is inevitable.

London Underground offers “Baby

on board” badges (I still occasionally

see pregnant women standing) and

“Please offer me a seat” badges for

those with hidden disabilities. A 2017

surveyfound that 78 per cent of

“Please offer me a seat” badge wearers

found it easier to get a seat. Other

cities, including New York, have

adopted the idea.

Those of us still standing can play

our part in keeping seats free for

those who need them. I’d be happy to

wear a badge that says “I don’t need a

seat. Really.”

@Skapinker; [email protected]

I have travelled on subways from

New York to Tokyo, Brussels to Hong

Kong, but those journeys there have

been too short and episodic to draw

any conclusions about whether the

I’m annoyed at the

thought that I look like

I need a seat. I don’t. I’m

in good health and do

Michael Skapinker not feel a day over 32

Business travel

posing a threat to the sub’s launch and

retrieval — the most dangerous part ofa

dive is the transition from ship to sea.

“It’s hardly flat, calm and glassy,” says

John Ramsay, the British engineer who

designed Limiting Factor (known by the

team as LF) for Triton, one of the lead-

ing civil submersible companies, and

who also dived Challenger Deep in May.

“It’s going to be extremely challenging.”

Ramsay is understandably proud of

LF.At present, no other submersible on

earth can go below 7,000m. “A full

ocean depth submersible is a bit like a

Formula One car, with certain compro-

mises in practicality imposed by the

extreme operating environment,” says

Ramsay. “It’s not going to take a family

of four down to the shops. It’s very

focused in what it has to do — dive

11,000 metres, withstand the immense

pressure, locate itself and manoeuvre

around to specific targets. The compro-

mises are what make it special.”

Jamieson adds that LF’s deep-diving

predecessors, such as the bathyscaphes

Trieste and Archimède, were “monster

vehicles” weighing about 300 tonnes,

were notoriously difficult to pilot and

had to be towed across the world by

ships. At 12.5 tonnes, LF is light and fast

by comparison. Every part of LF, from

Oliver Steeds, chief executive of the

Nekton Deep Ocean Research Institute

at the University of Oxford. “We need to

discover and understand our oceans

before we destroy them.”

The Five Deeps expedition has gener-

ated enormous quantities of scientific

research data from the hadal zone, that

part of the oceans that lies beyond 6,000

metres, as well as collecting numerous

new species of deep sea fauna, and film-

ing dozens of species for the first time.

“It’s just phenomenal. We’re not just

blindly sampling, we’re diving to any

depth we like,” says Jamieson. “We’re

ascending vertical walls underwater.

That’s something I never thought was

possible... Historically the big bathy-

scaphes were capable of reaching the

bottom, moving for a bit and coming up.

LF can navigate very complex terrain.

We’ve racked up hours and hours of

footage. Even in 12 months the progress

we’ve made is ridiculous.”

Beyond its scientific research, the

expedition also vindicates the private-

sector model now powering the “Race

for the Deep”, the marine equivalent of

the Space Race. Just as SpaceX, Virgin

Galactic, Blue Origin, Bigelow Aero-

space, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and

mapsnews.com/©HEREmapsnews.com/©HEREmapsnews.com/©HERE

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Molloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy DeepMolloy Deep

Challenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger DeepChallenger Deep

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South Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich TrenchSouth Sandwich Trench

ANTARCTICA

Arctic Ocean

Pacific

Ocean

Indian

Ocean

Atlantic

Ocean

Southern Ocean

moments when talking about subs, but

if there was potential for ‘scary’ we

wouldn’t dive,” says Alan Jamieson, the

expedition’s chief scientist, senior lec-

turer in deep-sea biology at Newcastle

University in the UK, recalling his

descent to Challenger Deep. “There

have been moments that require some

pretty quick thinking, and some rapid

troubleshooting, but mostly these are

laughed off as part of the adventure.”

When Vescovo reached the bottom of

the Mariana Trench, he simply switched

off the thrusters and drifted Zenlike

along the ocean floor before eating a

tuna sandwich. “You do need to stop

sometimes and really appreciate where

you are and be fully present in the

moment,” he says.

On paper Vescovo’s final mission

might seem straightforward. Molloy

Deep, in the Arctic Ocean, lies at 5,669m

beneath sea level, around half the depth

of the Mariana Trench. Yet no one

expects plain sailing. Molloy Deep has

never been dived before and sea condi-

tions this far north can be treacherous,

Members of the

Five Deeps

team, including

expedition leader

Rob McCallum

and Kelvin

Murray,will be

speaking at the

FT Weekend

Festivalon

September 7

ftweekend

festival.com

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