Deep-sea exploration
Encyclopedia
Deep-sea exploration is the investigation of physical, chemical, and biological conditions on the sea bed, for scientific or commercial
purposes. Deep-sea exploration
is considered as a relatively recent human activity compared to the other areas of geophysical research, as the depths of the sea have been investigated only during comparatively recent years. The ocean depths still remain as a largely unexplored part of the planet
, and form a relatively undiscovered domain.
In general, modern scientific Deep-sea
exploration can be said to have begun when French
scientist Pierre Simon de Laplace investigated the average depth of the Atlantic ocean
by observing tidal motions registered on Brazil
ian and Africa
n coasts. He calculated the depth to be 3,962 m (13,000 ft), a value later proven quite accurate by soundings measurement. Later on, with increasing demand for submarine cables installment, accurate soundings was required and the first investigations of the sea bottom were undertaken. First deep-sea life forms were discovered in 1864 when Norwegian
researchers obtained a sample of a stalked crinoid
at a depth of 3,109 m (10,200 ft). The British Government sent out the Challenger expedition
(a ship called the HMS Challenger
) in 1872 which discovered 715 new genera
and 4,417 new species
of marine organisms over the space of 4 years.
The first instrument used for deep-sea investigation was the sounding weight, used by British explorer Sir James Clark Ross. With this instrument, he reached a depth of 3,700 m (12,140 ft) in 1840. The Challenger expedition used similar instruments called Baillie sounding machines to extract samples from the sea bed.
In 1960, Jacques Piccard
and US Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in Trieste to make the deepest dive in history: 10,915 meters (35,810 ft).
sailors took measurements of sea depth and sampled seafloor sediments with this instrument, which consisted of a lead weight with a hollow bottom attached to a line. Once the weight reached the sea bottom and collected a sample of the seabed, the line was hauled back on board ship and measured in fathom
. Cornelius Drebbel
, a Dutch architect, is generally given credit for construction of the first submarine
. His submersible boat consisted of a wooden frame sheathed in animal skin. Oars, with its openings were sealed with tight-fitting leather flaps, extended out the sides to propel the craft through the water, at depths up to 4.6 meters (15 ft). Drebel tested his submarine in the Thames River in England
in sometime between 1620 and 1624. It is believed that King James I
may have enjoyed a short ride in the craft.
However, the nature of the deep ocean remained an unrevealed mystery until the mid-19th century. Scientists and artists alike imagined the deep sea as a lifeless soup of placid water, French author Jules Verne
who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre portrayed the deep ocean as contained in a bowl of static rock in his “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
”. By the late 1860s, controversial modern scientific theories, the origin of life by evolution
and the enormity of geologic time had created a foundation of scientific curiosity and provoked a rising interest in marine exploration.
The Royal Society of England
thus initiated an ambitious oceanographic mission to expand a scarce collection of existing marine data that included Charles Darwin's observations during the voyage of the HMS Beagle
(1831–1836), a bathymetric chart created by U.S. Navy Lt. Matthew Maury to aid installation of the first trans-continent telegraph cables in 1858, and a few examples of deep marine creatures.
From 1872 to 1876, a landmark ocean study was carried out by British scientists aboard HMS Challenger
, a sailing vessel that was redesigned into a laboratory ship. The HMS Challenger
expedition covered 127,653 km (68,890 nautical miles), and shipboard scientists collected hundreds of samples, hydrographic measurements, and specimens of marine life. They are also credited with providing the first real view of major seafloor features such as the deep ocean basins. They discovered more than 4,700 new species of marine life, including deep-sea organisms.
Deep-sea exploration advanced considerably in the 1900s thanks to a series of technological inventions, ranging from sonar
system to detect the presence of objects underwater through the use of sound to manned deep-diving submersibles such as DSV Alvin
. Operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
, Alvin is designed to carry a crew of three people to depths of 4,000 meters (13,124 ft). The submarine is equipped with lights, cameras, computers, and highly maneuverable robotic arms for collecting samples in the darkness of the ocean's depths.
However, the voyage to the ocean bottom is still a challenging experience. Scientists are working to find ways to study this extreme environment from the shipboard. With more sophisticated use of fiber optics, satellites, and remote-control robots, scientists one day may explore the deep sea from a computer screen on the deck rather than out of a porthole.
In the following, important key stones of deep sea exploration are listed.
fully employed this instrument to reach a depth of 3,700 m (12,140 ft) in 1840.
The sounding weights used on the HMS Challenger
were slightly advanced called "Baillie sounding machine". The British researchers used wire-line soundings to investigate sea depths and collected hundreds of biological samples from all the oceans except the Arctic
. Also used on the HMS Challenger
were dredges and scoops, suspended on ropes, with which samples of the sediment and biological specimens of the seabed could be obtained.
A more advanced version of the sounding weight is the gravity corer. The gravity corer allows researchers to sample and study sediment layers at the bottom of oceans. The corer consists of an open-ended tube with a lead weight and a trigger mechanism that releases the corer from its suspension cable when the corer is lowered over the seabed and a small weight touches the ground. The corer falls into the seabed and penetrates it to a depth of up to 10 m (33 ft). By lifting the corer, a long, cylindrical sample is extracted in which the structure of the seabed’s layers of sediment is preserved. Recovering sediment cores allows scientists to see the presence or absence of specific fossils in the mud that may indicate climate patterns at times in the past, such as during the ice ages. Samples of deeper layers can be obtained with a corer mounted in a drill. The drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution
is equipped to extract cores from depths of as much as 1,500 m (4900 ft) below the ocean bottom. (See Ocean Drilling Program
)
Echo-sounding instruments have also been widely used to determine the depth of the sea bottom since World War II
. This instrument is used primarily for determining the depth of water by means of an acoustic echo. A pulse of sound sent from the ship is reflected from the sea bottom back to the ship, the interval of time between transmission and reception being proportional to the depth of the water. By registering the time lapses between outgoing and returning signals continuously on paper tape, a continuous mapping of the seabed is obtained. Majority of the ocean floor has been mapped in this way.
In addition, high-resolution television cameras, thermometers, pressure meters, and seismographs are other notable instruments for deep-sea exploration invented by the technological advance. These instruments are either lowered to the sea bottom by long cables or directly attached to submersible buoys. Deep-sea currents can be studied by floats carrying an ultrasonic sound device so that their movements can be tracked from aboard the research vessel. Such vessels themselves are equipped with state -of-art navigational instruments, such as satellite
navigation systems, and global positioning systems that keep the vessel in a live position relative to a sonar beacon on the bottom of the ocean.
," allows divers to reach depths up to approximately 600 meters (2,000 ft). Some additional suits feature thruster
packs that boost a diver to different locations underwater.
To explore even deeper depths, deep-sea explorers must rely on specially constructed steel chambers to protect them. The American explorer William Beebe
, also a naturalist from Columbia University
in New York, was the designer of the first practical bathysphere to observe marine species at depths that could not be reached by a diver. The Bathysphere, a spherical steel vessel, was designed by Beebe and his fellow engineer Otis Barton
, an engineer at Harvard University
. In 1930 Beebe and Barton reached a depth of 435 m (about 1425 ft), and 923 m (3028 ft) in 1934. The potential danger was that if the cable broke, the occupants could not return to the surface. During the dive, Beebe peered out of a porthole and reported his observations by telephone to Barton who was on the surface.
In 1948, Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard
tested a much deeper-diving vessel he invented called the bathyscaphe
, a navigable deep-sea vessel with its gasoline-filled float and suspended chamber or gondola of spherical steel. On an experimental dive in the Cape Verde Islands, his bathyscaphe
successfully withstood the pressure on it at 1,402 meters (4,600 ft), but body was severely damaged by heavy waves after the dive. In 1954, with this bathyscaphe, Piccard reached a depth of 4,000 m (13,125 ft). In 1953, his son Jacques Piccard
joined in building new and improved bathyscaphe Trieste
, which dived to 3,139 meters (10,300 ft) in field trials. The U.S. Navy acquired Trieste in 1958 and equipped it with a new cabin to enable it to reach deep ocean trenches. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in Trieste to the deepest known point on Earth - the Challenger Deep
in the Mariana Trench
, successfully making the deepest dive in history: 10,915 meters (35,810 ft).
An increasing number of occupied submersibles are now employed around the world. The American-built DSV Alvin
that is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
, is a three-person submarine that can dive to about 3,600 m (12,000 ft) and is equipped with a mechanical manipulator to collect bottom samples. Alvin made its first test dive in 1964, and has performed more than 3,000 dives to average depths of 1,829 meters (6,000 ft). Alvin has also involved in a wide variety of research projects, such as one where giant tube worm
s were discovered on the Pacific Ocean
floor near the Galápagos Islands
.
(operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
), the French bathyscaphe Archimède
, and the French diving saucer Cyane
, assisted by support ships and the Glomar Challenger
, explored the great Rift Valley
of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
, southwest of the Azores
. About 5,200 photographs of the region were taken, and samples of relatively young solidified magma
were found on each side of the central fissure of the Rift Valley
, giving additional proof that the seafloor spreads at this site at a rate of about 2.5 cm (about 1 in) per year (see plate tectonics
,).
In a series of dives conducted between 1979–1980 into the Galápagos rift
, off the coast of Ecuador
, French,Italian, Mexican, and U.S. scientists found vents, nearly 9 m (nearly 30 ft) high and about 3.7 m (about 12 ft) across, discharging a mixture of hot water (up to 300°C/570°F) and dissolved metals in dark, smoke-like plumes (see hydrothermal vent
,). These hot springs play an important role in the formation of deposits that are enriched in copper
, nickel
, cadmium
, chromium
, and uranium
.
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
purposes. Deep-sea exploration
Exploration
Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...
is considered as a relatively recent human activity compared to the other areas of geophysical research, as the depths of the sea have been investigated only during comparatively recent years. The ocean depths still remain as a largely unexplored part of the planet
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, and form a relatively undiscovered domain.
In general, modern scientific Deep-sea
Deep sea
The deep sea, or deep layer, is the lowest layer in the ocean, existing below the thermocline and above the seabed, at a depth of 1000 fathoms or more. Little or no light penetrates this part of the ocean and most of the organisms that live there rely for subsistence on falling organic matter...
exploration can be said to have begun when French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
scientist Pierre Simon de Laplace investigated the average depth of the Atlantic ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
by observing tidal motions registered on Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian and Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n coasts. He calculated the depth to be 3,962 m (13,000 ft), a value later proven quite accurate by soundings measurement. Later on, with increasing demand for submarine cables installment, accurate soundings was required and the first investigations of the sea bottom were undertaken. First deep-sea life forms were discovered in 1864 when Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
researchers obtained a sample of a stalked crinoid
Crinoid
Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms . Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, "a lily", and eidos, "form". They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 meters. Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are...
at a depth of 3,109 m (10,200 ft). The British Government sent out the Challenger expedition
Challenger expedition
The Challenger expedition of 1872–76 was a scientific exercise that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the mother vessel, HMS Challenger....
(a ship called the HMS Challenger
HMS Challenger
Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Challenger, most famously the survey vessel Challenger that carried the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876....
) in 1872 which discovered 715 new genera
Genera
Genera is a commercial operating system and development environment for Lisp machines developed by Symbolics. It is essentially a fork of an earlier operating system originating on the MIT AI Lab's Lisp machines which Symbolics had used in common with LMI and Texas Instruments...
and 4,417 new species
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of marine organisms over the space of 4 years.
The first instrument used for deep-sea investigation was the sounding weight, used by British explorer Sir James Clark Ross. With this instrument, he reached a depth of 3,700 m (12,140 ft) in 1840. The Challenger expedition used similar instruments called Baillie sounding machines to extract samples from the sea bed.
In 1960, Jacques Piccard
Jacques Piccard
Jacques Piccard was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He was one of only two people, along with Lt...
and US Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in Trieste to make the deepest dive in history: 10,915 meters (35,810 ft).
Brief history
Throughout history, scientists have relied on a number of instruments to measure, map, and observe the ocean's depths. One of the first instruments used to examine the seafloor was the sounding weight. Ancient VikingViking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
sailors took measurements of sea depth and sampled seafloor sediments with this instrument, which consisted of a lead weight with a hollow bottom attached to a line. Once the weight reached the sea bottom and collected a sample of the seabed, the line was hauled back on board ship and measured in fathom
Fathom
A fathom is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems, used especially for measuring the depth of water.There are 2 yards in an imperial or U.S. fathom...
. Cornelius Drebbel
Cornelius Drebbel
Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel was the Dutch builder of the first navigable submarine in 1620. Drebbel was an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, optics and chemistry....
, a Dutch architect, is generally given credit for construction of the first submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
. His submersible boat consisted of a wooden frame sheathed in animal skin. Oars, with its openings were sealed with tight-fitting leather flaps, extended out the sides to propel the craft through the water, at depths up to 4.6 meters (15 ft). Drebel tested his submarine in the Thames River in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in sometime between 1620 and 1624. It is believed that King James I
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
may have enjoyed a short ride in the craft.
However, the nature of the deep ocean remained an unrevealed mystery until the mid-19th century. Scientists and artists alike imagined the deep sea as a lifeless soup of placid water, French author Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre portrayed the deep ocean as contained in a bowl of static rock in his “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax...
”. By the late 1860s, controversial modern scientific theories, the origin of life by evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
and the enormity of geologic time had created a foundation of scientific curiosity and provoked a rising interest in marine exploration.
The Royal Society of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
thus initiated an ambitious oceanographic mission to expand a scarce collection of existing marine data that included Charles Darwin's observations during the voyage of the HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...
(1831–1836), a bathymetric chart created by U.S. Navy Lt. Matthew Maury to aid installation of the first trans-continent telegraph cables in 1858, and a few examples of deep marine creatures.
From 1872 to 1876, a landmark ocean study was carried out by British scientists aboard HMS Challenger
HMS Challenger
Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Challenger, most famously the survey vessel Challenger that carried the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876....
, a sailing vessel that was redesigned into a laboratory ship. The HMS Challenger
HMS Challenger
Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Challenger, most famously the survey vessel Challenger that carried the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876....
expedition covered 127,653 km (68,890 nautical miles), and shipboard scientists collected hundreds of samples, hydrographic measurements, and specimens of marine life. They are also credited with providing the first real view of major seafloor features such as the deep ocean basins. They discovered more than 4,700 new species of marine life, including deep-sea organisms.
Deep-sea exploration advanced considerably in the 1900s thanks to a series of technological inventions, ranging from sonar
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...
system to detect the presence of objects underwater through the use of sound to manned deep-diving submersibles such as DSV Alvin
DSV Alvin
Alvin is a manned deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The vehicle was built by General Mills' Electronics Group in the same factory used to manufacture breakfast cereal-producing...
. Operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine science and engineering and to the education of marine researchers. Established in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research...
, Alvin is designed to carry a crew of three people to depths of 4,000 meters (13,124 ft). The submarine is equipped with lights, cameras, computers, and highly maneuverable robotic arms for collecting samples in the darkness of the ocean's depths.
However, the voyage to the ocean bottom is still a challenging experience. Scientists are working to find ways to study this extreme environment from the shipboard. With more sophisticated use of fiber optics, satellites, and remote-control robots, scientists one day may explore the deep sea from a computer screen on the deck rather than out of a porthole.
Milestones of Early Deep Sea Exploration
The extreme conditions in the deep sea require elaborate methods and technologies, which has been the main reason why its exploration has a comparatively short history.In the following, important key stones of deep sea exploration are listed.
- 1521: Ferdinand MagellanFerdinand MagellanFerdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. He was born in Sabrosa, in northern Portugal, and served King Charles I of Spain in search of a westward route to the "Spice Islands" ....
dropped a 700 m (2300 ft) long rope from his ship, which did not reach the ground and concluded that the sea was of infinite depth. - 1818: The British researche Sir John RossJohn Ross-Australia:* John Ross , explorer of Central Australia* John Ross , member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly...
was the first to find that the deep sea is inhabited by life when catching jelly fish and worms in about 2000 m (6550 ft) depth with a special device. - 1843: Nevertheless, Edward ForbesEdward ForbesProfessor Edward Forbes FRS, FGS was a Manx naturalist.-Early years:Forbes was born at Douglas, in the Isle of Man. While still a child, when not engaged in reading, or in the writing of verses and drawing of caricatures, he occupied himself with the collecting of insects, shells, minerals,...
claimed that diversity of life in the deep sea is little and decreases with increasing depth. He stated that there could be no life in waters deeper than 550 m (1800 ft), the so-called Abyssus Theory. - 1850: Near the LofotenLofotenLofoten is an archipelago and a traditional district in the county of Nordland, Norway. Though lying within the Arctic Circle, the archipelago experiences one of the world's largest elevated temperature anomalies relative to its high latitude.-Etymology:...
, Michael SarsMichael SarsMichael Sars was a Norwegian theologian and biologist.-Biography:Sars was born in Bergen, Norway. He studied natural history and theology at Royal Frederick University from 1823 and completed a cand.theol. degree in 1828. For several years he taught at a number of different schools, firstly in...
found a rich deep sea fauna in a depth of 800 m (2600 ft) thereby refuting the Abyssus Theory. - 1872–1876: The first systematic deep sea exploration was conducted by the Challenger ExpeditionChallenger expeditionThe Challenger expedition of 1872–76 was a scientific exercise that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the mother vessel, HMS Challenger....
on board the ship HMS ChallengerHMS Challenger (1858)HMS Challenger was a steam-assisted Royal Navy Pearl-class corvette launched on 13 February 1858 at the Woolwich Dockyard. She was the flagship of the Australia Station between 1866 and 1870....
led by Charles Wyville ThomsonCharles Wyville ThomsonSir Charles Wyville Thomson was a Scottish zoologist and chief scientist on the Challenger expedition.-Career:...
. This expedition revealed that the deep sea harbours a diverse, specialized biota. - 1890–1898: First Austrian-Hungarian deep sea expedition on board the ship PolaPolaPola may refer to:In places:*Pola, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, in south Poland*Pola, Oriental Mindoro, a municipality in the Philippines*Pola de Allande, a town and a parish in Allande, a municipality within the province of Asturias, in northern Spain...
led by Franz SteindachnerFranz SteindachnerFranz Steindachner was an Austrian zoologist.- Work and career :Being interested in natural history, Steindachner took up the study of fossil fishes on the recommendation of his friend Eduard Suess...
in the eastern Mediterranean and the Red SeaRed SeaThe Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
. - 1898–1899: First German deep sea expedition on board the ship Valdivia led by Carl ChunCarl ChunDr. Carl Chun was a German marine biologist.Chun was born in Höchst, today a part of Frankfurt, and studied zoology at the University of Leipzig where, after posts in Königsberg and Breslau, he was appointed professor for biology in 1892...
; found many new species from depths greater than 4000 m (13000 ft) in the southern Atlantic OceanAtlantic OceanThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. - 1930: William BeebeWilliam BeebeWilliam Beebe, born Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author...
and Otis BartonOtis BartonFrederick Otis Barton, Jr. was an American deep-sea diver, inventor and actor.Born in New York, the independently wealthy Barton designed the first bathysphere and made a dive with William Beebe off Bermuda in June 1930. They set the first record for deep-sea diving by descending 600 feet...
are the first humans to reach the Deep Sea when diving in the so-called Bathysphere, made from steel. They reach a depth of 435 m (1430 ft), where they observed jelly fish and shrimpShrimpShrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...
. - 1934: The Bathysphere reached a depth of 923 m (3028 ft).
- 1948: Otis BartonOtis BartonFrederick Otis Barton, Jr. was an American deep-sea diver, inventor and actor.Born in New York, the independently wealthy Barton designed the first bathysphere and made a dive with William Beebe off Bermuda in June 1930. They set the first record for deep-sea diving by descending 600 feet...
set out for a new record reaching a depth of 1370 m (4495 ft). - 1960: Jacques PiccardJacques PiccardJacques Piccard was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He was one of only two people, along with Lt...
and Don WalshDon WalshDon Walsh is an American oceanographer, explorer and marine policy specialist. He and Jacques Piccard were aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste when it made a record maximum descent into the Mariana Trench on 23 January 1960, the deepest point of the world's ocean...
reached the deepest point at 10,740 m (35236 ft), in their deep sea vessel TriesteBathyscaphe TriesteThe Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe with a crew of two, which reached a record maximum depth of about , in the deepest known part of the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam, on January 23, 1960, crewed by Jacques Piccard ...
, where they observed fish and other deep sea organisms.
Oceanographic instrumentation
The sounding weight, one of the first instruments used for the sea bottom investigation, was designed as a tube on the base which forced the seabed in when it hit the bottom of the ocean. British explorer Sir James Clark RossJames Clark Ross
Sir James Clark Ross , was a British naval officer and explorer. He explored the Arctic with his uncle Sir John Ross and Sir William Parry, and later led his own expedition to Antarctica.-Arctic explorer:...
fully employed this instrument to reach a depth of 3,700 m (12,140 ft) in 1840.
The sounding weights used on the HMS Challenger
HMS Challenger
Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Challenger, most famously the survey vessel Challenger that carried the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876....
were slightly advanced called "Baillie sounding machine". The British researchers used wire-line soundings to investigate sea depths and collected hundreds of biological samples from all the oceans except the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
. Also used on the HMS Challenger
HMS Challenger
Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Challenger, most famously the survey vessel Challenger that carried the Challenger expedition from 1872 to 1876....
were dredges and scoops, suspended on ropes, with which samples of the sediment and biological specimens of the seabed could be obtained.
A more advanced version of the sounding weight is the gravity corer. The gravity corer allows researchers to sample and study sediment layers at the bottom of oceans. The corer consists of an open-ended tube with a lead weight and a trigger mechanism that releases the corer from its suspension cable when the corer is lowered over the seabed and a small weight touches the ground. The corer falls into the seabed and penetrates it to a depth of up to 10 m (33 ft). By lifting the corer, a long, cylindrical sample is extracted in which the structure of the seabed’s layers of sediment is preserved. Recovering sediment cores allows scientists to see the presence or absence of specific fossils in the mud that may indicate climate patterns at times in the past, such as during the ice ages. Samples of deeper layers can be obtained with a corer mounted in a drill. The drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution
JOIDES Resolution
thumb|right|295px|Drillship JOIDES Resolution in 1988JOIDES Resolution is a scientific drilling ship once used by the Ocean Drilling Program, then by its successor, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. It is the successor of the Glomar Challenger.The ship was launched as Sedco/BP 471, an oil...
is equipped to extract cores from depths of as much as 1,500 m (4900 ft) below the ocean bottom. (See Ocean Drilling Program
Ocean Drilling Program
The Ocean Drilling Program was an international cooperative effort to explore and study the composition and structure of the Earth's ocean basins. ODP, which began in 1985, was the direct successor to the highly successful Deep Sea Drilling Project initiated in 1968 by the United States...
)
Echo-sounding instruments have also been widely used to determine the depth of the sea bottom since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. This instrument is used primarily for determining the depth of water by means of an acoustic echo. A pulse of sound sent from the ship is reflected from the sea bottom back to the ship, the interval of time between transmission and reception being proportional to the depth of the water. By registering the time lapses between outgoing and returning signals continuously on paper tape, a continuous mapping of the seabed is obtained. Majority of the ocean floor has been mapped in this way.
In addition, high-resolution television cameras, thermometers, pressure meters, and seismographs are other notable instruments for deep-sea exploration invented by the technological advance. These instruments are either lowered to the sea bottom by long cables or directly attached to submersible buoys. Deep-sea currents can be studied by floats carrying an ultrasonic sound device so that their movements can be tracked from aboard the research vessel. Such vessels themselves are equipped with state -of-art navigational instruments, such as satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
navigation systems, and global positioning systems that keep the vessel in a live position relative to a sonar beacon on the bottom of the ocean.
Oceanographic submersibles
Because of the high pressure, the depth to which a diver can descend without special equipment is limited. The deepest recorded made by a skin diver is 127 meters (417 ft). The deepest record made by a scuba diver is not much deeper, at 145 meters (475 ft). Revolutionary new diving suits, such as the "JIM suitJIM suit
The JIM suit is an atmospheric diving suit , which is designed to maintain an interior pressure of one atmosphere despite exterior pressures, eliminating the majority of physiological dangers associated with deep diving...
," allows divers to reach depths up to approximately 600 meters (2,000 ft). Some additional suits feature thruster
Marine propulsion
Marine propulsion is the mechanism or system used to generate thrust to move a ship or boat across water. While paddles and sails are still used on some smaller boats, most modern ships are propelled by mechanical systems consisting a motor or engine turning a propeller, or less frequently, in jet...
packs that boost a diver to different locations underwater.
To explore even deeper depths, deep-sea explorers must rely on specially constructed steel chambers to protect them. The American explorer William Beebe
William Beebe
William Beebe, born Charles William Beebe was an American naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, explorer, and author...
, also a naturalist from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York, was the designer of the first practical bathysphere to observe marine species at depths that could not be reached by a diver. The Bathysphere, a spherical steel vessel, was designed by Beebe and his fellow engineer Otis Barton
Otis Barton
Frederick Otis Barton, Jr. was an American deep-sea diver, inventor and actor.Born in New York, the independently wealthy Barton designed the first bathysphere and made a dive with William Beebe off Bermuda in June 1930. They set the first record for deep-sea diving by descending 600 feet...
, an engineer at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. In 1930 Beebe and Barton reached a depth of 435 m (about 1425 ft), and 923 m (3028 ft) in 1934. The potential danger was that if the cable broke, the occupants could not return to the surface. During the dive, Beebe peered out of a porthole and reported his observations by telephone to Barton who was on the surface.
In 1948, Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard
Auguste Piccard
Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer.-Biography:Piccard and his twin brother Jean Felix were born in Basel, Switzerland...
tested a much deeper-diving vessel he invented called the bathyscaphe
Bathyscaphe
A bathyscaphe is a free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design....
, a navigable deep-sea vessel with its gasoline-filled float and suspended chamber or gondola of spherical steel. On an experimental dive in the Cape Verde Islands, his bathyscaphe
Bathyscaphe
A bathyscaphe is a free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design....
successfully withstood the pressure on it at 1,402 meters (4,600 ft), but body was severely damaged by heavy waves after the dive. In 1954, with this bathyscaphe, Piccard reached a depth of 4,000 m (13,125 ft). In 1953, his son Jacques Piccard
Jacques Piccard
Jacques Piccard was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He was one of only two people, along with Lt...
joined in building new and improved bathyscaphe Trieste
Bathyscaphe Trieste
The Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe with a crew of two, which reached a record maximum depth of about , in the deepest known part of the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam, on January 23, 1960, crewed by Jacques Piccard ...
, which dived to 3,139 meters (10,300 ft) in field trials. The U.S. Navy acquired Trieste in 1958 and equipped it with a new cabin to enable it to reach deep ocean trenches. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in Trieste to the deepest known point on Earth - the Challenger Deep
Challenger Deep
The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point in the oceans, with a depth of to by direct measurement from submersibles, and slightly more by sonar bathymetry . It is located at the southern end of the Mariana Trench near the Mariana Islands group...
in the Mariana Trench
Mariana Trench
The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about long but has a mean width of only...
, successfully making the deepest dive in history: 10,915 meters (35,810 ft).
An increasing number of occupied submersibles are now employed around the world. The American-built DSV Alvin
DSV Alvin
Alvin is a manned deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The vehicle was built by General Mills' Electronics Group in the same factory used to manufacture breakfast cereal-producing...
that is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine science and engineering and to the education of marine researchers. Established in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research...
, is a three-person submarine that can dive to about 3,600 m (12,000 ft) and is equipped with a mechanical manipulator to collect bottom samples. Alvin made its first test dive in 1964, and has performed more than 3,000 dives to average depths of 1,829 meters (6,000 ft). Alvin has also involved in a wide variety of research projects, such as one where giant tube worm
Giant tube worm
Giant tube worms, Riftia pachyptila, are marine invertebrates in the phylum Annelida related to tube worms commonly found in the intertidal and pelagic zones...
s were discovered on the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
floor near the Galápagos Islands
Galápagos Islands
The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part.The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a...
.
Unmanned Submersibles
ROVs, or Remote Operated Vehicles, are seeing increasing use in underwater exploration. These submersibles are piloted through a cable which connects to the surface ship, and they can reach depths of up to 6,000 meters. New developments in robotics have also led to the creation of AUVs, or Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. The robotic submarines are programmed in advance, and receive no instruction from the surface. HROV combine features of both ROVs and AUV, operating independently or with a cable. Argo was employed in 1985 to locate the wreck of the RMS Titanic; the smaller Jason was also used to explore the ship wreck.Scientific results
In 1974 the AlvinAlvin
Alvin is a male given name.*Alvin Seville, Cartoon singing chipmunk from, "Alvin and the chipmunks "Alvin and the Chipmunks " and "Alvin and the Chipmunks The Squeakquel"*Alvin Adams, early 19th century businessman...
(operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine science and engineering and to the education of marine researchers. Established in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research...
), the French bathyscaphe Archimède
Archimède
The bathyscaphe Archimède is a deep diving research submersible of the French Navy. It used of hexane as the gasoline buoyancy of its float. It was designed by Pierre Willm and Georges Houot...
, and the French diving saucer Cyane
Cyane
In Greek mythology, Cyane or Kyane was a nymph who tried to prevent Hades from abducting Persephone, her playmate. Upon failure, she dissolved away in tears and melted into her pool. In a slightly different version, Cyane was the Naiad of a spring in the Sicilian town of Syracuse...
, assisted by support ships and the Glomar Challenger
Glomar Challenger
The 120m long Glomar Challenger was a deep sea research and scientific drilling vessel for oceanography and marine geology studies. It was designed by Global Marine Inc...
, explored the great Rift Valley
Rift Valley
In order of specificity, Rift Valley can refer to:*a rift valley in general*the Great Rift Valley*the Rift Valley fever*the valley of the East African Rift*Rift Valley Province, Kenya and border with Uganda...
of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Mid-Atlantic Ridge
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. It separates the Eurasian Plate and North American Plate in the North Atlantic, and the African Plate from the South...
, southwest of the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
. About 5,200 photographs of the region were taken, and samples of relatively young solidified magma
Magma
Magma is a mixture of molten rock, volatiles and solids that is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and is expected to exist on other terrestrial planets. Besides molten rock, magma may also contain suspended crystals and dissolved gas and sometimes also gas bubbles. Magma often collects in...
were found on each side of the central fissure of the Rift Valley
Rift Valley
In order of specificity, Rift Valley can refer to:*a rift valley in general*the Great Rift Valley*the Rift Valley fever*the valley of the East African Rift*Rift Valley Province, Kenya and border with Uganda...
, giving additional proof that the seafloor spreads at this site at a rate of about 2.5 cm (about 1 in) per year (see plate tectonics
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
,).
In a series of dives conducted between 1979–1980 into the Galápagos rift
Rift
In geology, a rift or chasm is a place where the Earth's crust and lithosphere are being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics....
, off the coast of Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, French,Italian, Mexican, and U.S. scientists found vents, nearly 9 m (nearly 30 ft) high and about 3.7 m (about 12 ft) across, discharging a mixture of hot water (up to 300°C/570°F) and dissolved metals in dark, smoke-like plumes (see hydrothermal vent
Hydrothermal vent
A hydrothermal vent is a fissure in a planet's surface from which geothermally heated water issues. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart, ocean basins, and hotspots. Hydrothermal vents exist because the earth is both...
,). These hot springs play an important role in the formation of deposits that are enriched in copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...
, nickel
Nickel
Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...
, cadmium
Cadmium
Cadmium is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. This soft, bluish-white metal is chemically similar to the two other stable metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Similar to zinc, it prefers oxidation state +2 in most of its compounds and similar to mercury it shows a low...
, chromium
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...
, and uranium
Uranium
Uranium is a silvery-white metallic chemical element in the actinide series of the periodic table, with atomic number 92. It is assigned the chemical symbol U. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons...
.