Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe. In 1960, it became the first crewed vessel to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in Earth's seabed. The mission was the final goal for Project Nekton, a series of dives conducted by the United States Navy in the Pacific Ocean near Guam. The vessel was piloted by Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh. They reached a depth of about 10,916 metres (35,814 ft).
Alvin (DSV-2) is a crewed deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The original vehicle was built by General Mills' Electronics Group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Named to honor the prime mover and creative inspiration for the vehicle, Allyn Vine, Alvin was commissioned on June 5, 1964.
Robert Duane Ballard is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of shipwrecks. He is best known for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998. He discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 in 2002 and visited Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who saved its crew.
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 submersible is an underwater vehicle which needs to be transported and supported by a larger watercraft or platform. This distinguishes submersibles from submarines, which are self-supporting and capable of prolonged independent operation at sea.
Jacques Piccard was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater submarines for studying ocean currents. In the Challenger Deep, he and Lieutenant Don Walsh of the United States Navy were the first people to explore the deepest known part of the world's ocean, and the deepest known location on the surface of Earth's crust, the Mariana Trench, located in the western North Pacific Ocean.
A deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) is a deep-diving crewed submersible that is self-propelled. Several navies operate vehicles that can be accurately described as DSVs. DSVs are commonly divided into two types: research DSVs, which are used for exploration and surveying, and DSRVs, which are intended to be used for rescuing the crew of a sunken navy submarine, clandestine (espionage) missions, or both. DSRVs are equipped with docking chambers to allow personnel ingress and egress via a manhole.
Ocean exploration is a part of oceanography describing the exploration of ocean surfaces. Notable explorations were undertaken by the Greeks, the Romans, the Polynesians, the Phoenicians, Phytheas, Herodotus, the Vikings, the Portuguese and Muslims. Scientific investigations began with early scientists such as James Cook, Charles Darwin, and Edmund Halley. Ocean exploration itself coincided with the developments in shipbuilding, diving, navigation, depth, measurement, exploration, and cartography.
DSV-4 is a 25-ton, crewed deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy, now known only by its hull number, not by its former name.
An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as saturation. Usually this is done in an underwater habitat on the seafloor for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface. The term is often restricted to scientists and academics, though there were a group of military aquanauts during the SEALAB program. Commercial divers in similar circumstances are referred to as saturation divers. An aquanaut is distinct from a submariner, in that a submariner is confined to a moving underwater vehicle such as a submarine that holds the water pressure out. Aquanaut derives from the Latin word aqua ("water") plus the Greek nautes ("sailor"), by analogy to the similar construction "astronaut".
Johnson Sea Link was a type of deep-sea scientific research submersible built by Edwin Albert Link. Link built the first submersible, Johnson Sea Link I, in 1971 at the request of his friend Seward Johnson, founder of the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. It was the successor to Link's previous submersible, Deep Diver, which had been determined to be unsafe for use at great depths or in extremely cold temperatures. Johnson Sea Link II was built in 1975.
Aluminaut was the world's first aluminum submarine. An experimental vessel, the 80-ton, 15.5-metre (51 ft) crewed deep-ocean research submersible was built by Reynolds Metals Company, which was seeking to promote the utility of aluminum. Aluminaut was based in Miami, Florida, and was operated from 1964 to 1970 by Reynolds Submarine Services, doing contract work for the U.S. Navy and other organizations, including marine biologist Jacques Cousteau.
Deep-sea exploration is the investigation of physical, chemical, and biological conditions on the ocean waters and sea bed beyond the continental shelf, for scientific or commercial purposes. Deep-sea exploration is an aspect of underwater exploration and is considered a relatively recent human activity compared to the other areas of geophysical research, as the deeper depths of the sea have been investigated only during comparatively recent years. The ocean depths still remain a largely unexplored part of the Earth, and form a relatively undiscovered domain.
Pisces-class submersibles are three-person research deep-submergence vehicles designed and built by Hyco International Hydrodynamics of North Vancouver in British Columbia with a maximum operating depth of 2,000 m (6,560 ft). The vehicles have multiple view ports and sample collecting, environmental sensing, and instrument placement capabilities. The pressure hull has a 7 ft (2.1 m) inside diameter and is made of HY-100 steel with three forward-looking acrylic windows, 6 in (15 cm) in diameter. Designed by Allan Trice, the Pisces series of submersibles were representative of crewed submersibles built in the late 1960s and were proven workhorses in offshore exploration and oceanographic research. Pisces II was the first production model of the design and was completed in 1968, with nine more Pisces submarines built before the manufacturer went out of business in the late 1970s.
Project Nekton was the codename for a series of very shallow test dives and also deep-submergence operations in the Pacific Ocean near Guam that ended with the United States Navy-owned research bathyscaphe Trieste entering the Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the world's oceans.
Mesoscaphe is a type of submersible submarine invented by Jacques Piccard:
The SeaOrbiter, also known as Sea Orbiter, is a proposed oceangoing research vessel. Construction was due to start in 2014 but by May 2015, only the Eye of SeaOrbiter has been completed, and as of early 2021, there is no news of any other construction.
Deep Diver was the name of a deep-sea scientific research submersible designed by Edwin Albert Link. Deep Diver was the first small submersible designed for lockout diving, allowing divers to leave and enter the craft while underwater. It was first launched in January 1966.
The Johnson Sea Link accident was a June 1973 incident that claimed the lives of two divers. During a seemingly routine dive off Key West, the submersible Johnson Sea Link was trapped for over 24 hours in the wreckage of the destroyer USS Fred T. Berry, which had been sunk to create an artificial reef. Although the submersible was eventually recovered by the rescue vessel A.B. Wood II, two of the four occupants died of carbon dioxide poisoning: 31-year-old Edwin Clayton Link and 51-year-old diver Albert Dennison Stover. The submersible's pilot, Archibald "Jock" Menzies, and ichthyologist Robert Meek survived. Over the next two years, Edwin Link designed an unmanned Cabled Observation and Rescue Device (CORD) that could free a trapped submersible.
The Auguste Piccard mesoscaphe, also known simply as the Mésoscaphe, was a crewed underwater submarine designed in 1964 by Jacques Piccard, son of Auguste Piccard. It was the world's first passenger submarine, built for Expo64, the 1964 Swiss national exhibition in Lausanne. It was built at the Giovanola fabrication plant in Monthey and the first immersion took place in Le Bouveret on 27 February 1964. It has a total of 45 Plexiglas portholes, with 20 on each side for the 40 passengers.
United States
