A Spanish submersible pilot has descended into the abyss of La Sirena, with a depth of 10,706 meters, the second deepest point in the Mariana Trench and the third in the world.
The pilot Héctor Salvador (Lugo, 1983) descended on April 18 to the bottom of the abyss aboard a submersible as a mission specialist and co-pilot of the Australian Tim Macdonald, the company Triton Submarines Emea, based in Barcelona, has reported in a statement. .
"Salvador has broken Spain's depth record. It is an important achievement," said the expedition leader, Rob McCallum.
Héctor Salvador (left) breaks the Spanish record for depth in a submersible Triton Submarine.
The dive, lasting more than 12 hours, was carried out in the
DSV Limiting Factor
submersible
, a private vehicle capable of working in the extreme conditions of the hadal zone -which is below the abyssal zone- and which has visited the point deepest of the five oceans on the
2019
Five Deeps
expedition
.
Salvador has assured that as part of the team that built the vehicle, he is "really proud" of its performance, and has remarked that it is the
first bathyscaphe certified to repeatedly descend to 11 kilometers of depth
.
The main objective of the dive was to locate and recover a scientific module that had become stuck on the seabed the previous day and, after successfully completing the operation, Salvador and Macdonald took a
sample of the microbial mat present in the sediments of the fossa
, which is being analyzed by the expedition.
Four hours of descent
Salvador, director of operations for
Triton Submarines
, played a key role in the development of the bathyscaphe built for
Caladan Oceanic
, coordinating the important Spanish contribution to the project.
"You realize the monumental depth of the Mariana Trench when it takes more than four and a half hours to reach the bottom," said Salvador, who described
the experience as overwhelming
.
Until the entry into service of the
DSV Limiting Factor
, the Mariana Trench had only been visited by manned vehicles on two occasions: in 1960 by the
Trieste
bathyscaphe
and in 2012 by filmmaker
James Cameron
aboard the
Deepsea Challenger.
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