Explorer Victor Vescovo sets new record for deepest submarine dive
Explorer finds new species, man-made contamination on ocean floor during record-breaking deep sea dive in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.
Victor Vescovo took the journey to what is believed to be the deepest point mankind has visited in any ocean -- finding shocking things from new species to human trash -- and told Fox News on Tuesday that the discovery of plastic in such far reaches proves the need for more vigilance to protect the oceans.
He took the Challenger Deep to the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean, calling the depths below “an incredibly peaceful place” in an interview on “Shepard Smith Reporting.”
He broke the record for the deepest dive. His dive went 52 feet lower than a 1960 dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench completed by U.S. Navy lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard in a vessel called the bathyscaphe Trieste. Movie director James Cameron made the descent in 2012 but failed to beat out the record.
The entire journey took nearly 12 hours — four hours to descend, four hours spent at the bottom, and then about four hours to ascend again.
Vescovo, a businessman and amateur pilot who has also traversed the highest mountain peaks, including Mount Everest, said the goal of the expedition was to go to areas of the waters that were unexplored.
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“I think more,” he told Shepard Smith, noting he feels the ocean has more to teach humanity over outer space.
“So much of it is unmapped... Two-thirds of our planet hasn’t been explored,” he said, speaking of the ocean world underwater. “What we don’t know, we don’t know.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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