To understand the ocean, protect and develop the ocean, deep-sea scientific research and the technology of manned submersibles are essential.

At present, my country already has three deep-sea manned submersibles, "Jiaolong", "Deep Sea Warrior" and "Struggle".

The reporter learned from the 2022 annual meeting of the "Deep Sea Warrior/Struggle" manned submersible user scientific steering committee that the "Deep Sea Warrior" and "Struggle" completed 100 dives and 75 dives in 2022. , This is the fourth year in a row that my country's manned submersibles have ranked first in the world in the number of annual dives since 2018.

The epidemic has not stopped domestic scientists from exploring the mysteries of the deep sea. Experts predict that by the end of 2023, the cumulative number of dives of the three manned submersibles "Jiaolong", "Deep Sea Warrior" and "Struggle" may exceed a thousand .

  "The two submersibles 'Deep Sea Warrior' and 'Struggle' not only have reached the world's advanced level in operation, but practice in recent years has also shown that their operation and maintenance capabilities have reached the world's first-class level, and opened up a new era for my country's deep-diving scientific research. New fields." Experts from the Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said that in the future, the Institute will continue to develop ship-submersible, manned-unmanned collaborative operation technology, continuously improve the construction of the maritime emergency response system, expand the new dimension of deep-sea operations, and further Strengthen the operation and maintenance team to improve the operational capabilities of underwater archaeology and special target detection, and support deep-diving scientific research to achieve more innovative results.

  The reporter learned from the Deep Sea Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that by the end of 2022, the "Deep Sea Warrior" will have a total of 65 service units, and the "Struggle" will have a total of 23 service units, and 4 new 10,000-meter-level dives have been added.

Among the user units served by manned submersibles in 2022, scientific research institutes and universities account for more than half.

  A university researcher introduced that in the past, due to the lack of effective operating tools for deep-sea scientific research and the development and utilization of marine resources, researchers were unable to obtain a sufficient number of deep-sea biological research samples, which once led to slow progress in scientific research.

Today, the upgrade of a series of scientific research equipment and research platforms represented by manned submersibles has brought about progress and changes in the scientific paradigm.

Scientists were able to make the abyss environment and related samples and data surface from the depth of 10,000 meters, and present them to the public.

  Relying on the "Struggle", the Deep Life International Research Center of Shanghai Jiaotong University, in conjunction with the Institute of Deep Ocean Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Life Sciences of BGI, Zhejiang University and other domestic related units, launched the Abyss Environment and Ecology Research Program (referred to as the MEER program).

With the help of the manned submersible, not only the sampling accuracy has achieved a leap of four orders of magnitude from hundreds of meters to centimeters, but the sampling frequency of a single dive operation has also increased from several to hundreds of copies.

With the support of a large number of abyssal samples, the MEER project has established a data set of abyssal microorganisms with a data volume of more than 160Tb.

Relying on big data, the MEER scientific research team has made important progress in the research of abyssal microorganisms.

Studies have shown that the abyss has the highest microbial diversity, novelty and potential for new resources in the world.

  In recent years, manned submersibles have been widely used in scientific research.

Manned submersibles can be seen in the study of abyss ecology, the discovery and research of whale falls, and even in Chinese deep-sea archaeology.

  "Manned submersibles are so important to deep-sea research!" Xie Wei, an associate professor at Sun Yat-sen University's School of Marine Science, was still excited when he mentioned the moment when the whale fell was discovered.

In 2020, Xie Wei boarded the "Explorer 1" scientific research ship to complete the scientific research voyage (TS-16 voyage) as the co-chief scientist.

It was during this scientific expedition that Chinese researchers discovered whale falls for the first time in the South China Sea. This was the first time Chinese scientists discovered this type of ecosystem.

  Manned submersibles also show their talents in deep sea archaeology.

Song Jianzhong, a researcher at the Archaeological Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, told reporters that thanks to the development of China's manned deep diving technology, as well as the coordinated application of deep towed geophysical exploration, ROV, and manned submersibles, deep-sea archeology in the South China Sea has made important progress.

He also revealed that in 2023, the manned submersible will go to the South China Sea again to conduct special research on deep-sea archaeology.

  Our reporter Wu Jinjiao