Lecture on deepest ocean dive

Sitting in a small steel sphere, with walls 13cm thick, and sinking 11km to the bottom of the ocean where 100,000 tonnes of water squeezes at the seams, has all the danger of sitting in a tin can waiting for a bulldozer to run it over.

It was a record dive depth set by United States Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and the late Jacques Piccard on January 23, 1960, and has never been beaten.

Now, a Dunedin man, who has met Piccard and worked with Walsh, will mark the 50th anniversary of the feat by giving a lecture about the expedition.

Marine biologist and writer Peter Batson (34) said the duo used the bathyscaph Trieste (a "bizzare-shaped" submersible) to dive to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, 200 miles off the Pacific island of Guam.
Click photo to enlarge
Lt Don Walsh (left) and the late Jacques Piccard (right) in the sphere of the bathyscaph Trieste.
Lt Don Walsh (left) and the late Jacques Piccard (right) in the sphere of the bathyscaph Trieste.
It is the deepest oceanic chasm in the world, and the 11km descent took nearly five hours.

The journey was not without drama.

At a depth of about 10km below the surface, the water pressure was so great a window cracked in the bathyscaph's entrance tunnel, he said.

Half a century later, no-one has returned and no manned submersible operating today can dive that deep.

For Mr Batson, the pair were his childhood heroes.

"I knew who these guys were when I was a kid, because I was an ocean nut, and they were very famous.
Click photo to enlarge
Dunedin biologist and writer Peter Batson will give a lecture about the bathyscaph Trieste and its crew, which descended 11km to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in 1960. Photo by Linda Robertson.


"Before they did it, knowledge of the deepest parts of the ocean was very sketchy. They were truly diving into the unknown.

"What they did was the equivalent to what astronauts have done."

Mr Batson said he met Piccard shortly before his death in 2008, and got to know Walsh while working with him on several deep-sea expeditions.

"I first met Don on an expedition to the Titanic in 2005.

"He is a huge man.

"It's hard to believe he was able to fit inside the [bathyscaph Trieste] sphere. There wasn't much room in there."

Mr Batson's hour-long talk at 4pm today at the New Zealand Marine Studies Centre, Portobello, will celebrate the bathyscaph's achievement, the courage of Jacques Piccard and Lt Walsh, and what they saw as they descended into the crushing depths of the bottom of the world.

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/91084/lecture-deepest-ocean-dive