There are much more places on earth that we know less about than the vast expanses of space. It is primarily about the uncontrollable water depths. According to scientists, science has not actually begun to study the mysterious life at the bottom of the oceans, all research is at the beginning of the way.
From year to year, there are ever new daredevils who are ready to perform a new record deep sea dive. In the material presented I would like to talk about swimming without equipment, scuba diving and with the help of bathyscaphe, which went down in history.
The deepest human dive
For a long time, the French athlete Loic Leferm was the champion in freediving. In 2002, he managed to carry out deep-sea diving at 162 meters. Many divers tried to improve this figure, but died in the depths of the sea. In 2004, Leferm himself became a victim of his own vanity. During a training swim in the oceanic depression of Villefranche-sur-Mer, he plunged 171 meters. However, the athlete failed to rise to the surface.
The last record deep dive was made by Austrian freediver Herbert Nietzsc. He managed to descend to 214 meters without an oxygen tank. Thus, the achievement of Loic Leferm is a thing of the past.
Women's record deep diving
A few records among women were set by the French athlete Audrey Mestre. On May 29, 1997, she dived as much as 80 meters with one breath holding, without a balloon. A year later, Audrey broke her own record, plunging into the deep sea 115 meters. In 2001, the athlete plunged as much as 130 meters. The specified record, which has a world status among women, is assigned to Audrey to this day.
On October 12, 2002, Mestre made her last attempt in life, plunging 171 meters without equipment off the coast of the Dominican Republic. The athlete used only a special load, without carrying oxygen tanks. The rise was to be carried out using an air dome. However, the latter was not refueled. 8 minutes after the deep diving started, the body of Audrey was brought to the surface by scuba divers. As the official cause of death of the athlete, the occurrence of problems with equipment for lifting to the surface was noted.
Scuba Diving Record
Now let's talk about scuba diving. The most significant of them was carried out by the French diver Pascal Bernabe. In the summer of 2005, he managed to sink into the depths of the sea for 330 meters. Although it was originally planned to conquer a depth of 320 meters. Such a significant record was held as a result of a small incident. During the descent, a rope was stretched near Pascal, which allowed it to swim 10 extra meters in depth.
The diver managed to successfully climb to the surface. Ascent lasted a long 9 hours. The reason for such a slow rise was a high risk of decompression sickness, which could lead to respiratory arrest and damage to blood vessels. It is worth noting that to establish a record, Pascal Bernaba had to spend as much as 3 years in constant training.
Record diving in the bathyscaphe
On January 23, 1960, scientists Donald Walsh and Jacques Piccard set a record for diving to the bottom of the ocean in a manned vehicle. On board the small submarine Trieste, the researchers reached the bottom of the Mariinsky Depression, being at a depth of 10,898 meters.
The deepest diving in the manned bathyscaphe was carried out thanks to the construction of the Deepsea Challenger, which took the designers a long 8 years. This mini-submarine is a streamlined capsule weighing more than 10 tons and with a wall thickness of 6.4 cm. It is noteworthy that, before commissioning, the bathyscaphe was tested several times with a pressure of 1160 atmospheres, which is higher than the figure that should have affected the walls of the apparatus at the bottom of the ocean .
In 2012, the famous American filmmaker James Cameron, piloting the mini-submarine Deepsea Challenger, conquered the previous record set on the Trieste, and even improved it by plunging into the Mariinsky Depression by 11 km.