Reaching Deep

Texan explorer and industrialist Victor Vescovo this year dived deeper beneath the ocean than anyone had ever done before. This exclusive insight details the epic journey that took him there.

- Glenn Singleman

ON 28 APRIL, after three years of intensive preparation, Victor Vescovo finally reached what’s now the deepest-known part of the planet: 10,928m under the ocean in the Pacific. Nestled inside a purpose-built deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) called Limiting Factor, he dived to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench, reaching 16m further than anyone before. The previous record for a solo dive was 10,908m, set by filmmaker and explorer James Cameron in the Deepsea Challenger in 2012.

Victor’s record-breaking dive took him deeper than Mt Everest is high, to a cold, lightless, high-pressure place as inaccessible as outer space. It was the fourth successful leg of his Five Deeps Expedition, which was designed to send a human to the very bottom of each of the world’s five oceans: the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic, South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean, Java Trench in the Indian Ocean, Challenger Deep in the Pacific and Molloy Deep in the Arctic. The latter was the last left to reach at the time of going to press. A fivepart documentary series filmed by Atlantic Productions is due to be shown on the Discovery Channel at the end of this year.

THE DECISION TO embark on the Five Deeps Expedition was made by Victor in 2015 while undertaking The Explorers Grand Slam – climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents and skiing to both the north and south poles. After exploring Earth’s highest peaks it seemed natural he should seek its lowest depths. But he’d been mulling over the concept well before that and already knew there was a huge problem: he’d need a submersible craft capable of repeated dives to some of Earth’s most inhospitable places and such a thing didn’t yet exist.