It’s nice that Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh got to the bottom. If Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh hadn’t gotten to the bottom, the answer to, “What’s the deepest a human being’s ever gone into the ocean?” would have to involve speculation about those people on the Malaysian jet. Or you’d have to specify that you meant a living human being. There are a lot of bones in the ocean, you know? Who knows where the deepest set is at?
The Trieste wasn’t technically a submarine, I guess, even though it was a self-propelled vessel that traveled underwater (someone must be gatekeeping the word “submarine,” but that’s a matter for another day). It was a bathyscaphe, a made-up word but a made-up word made up by its inventor, Auguste Piccard (Jacques’s dad). If you invent something, you also get to invent a word to go with it. This is why people invent things. The two-for-one deal.
In 1960, the Trieste reached the bottom of the bottom of the ocean, by which I mean…let’s explain this. You’ve got the bottom of the ocean, right? The ocean floor? Well that also has a bottom. It has a lowest point. That point is the Challenger Deep within the Mariana Trench, or as I like to call it, the bottom of the bottom of the ocean.
We don’t actually know that the Challenger Deep is the deepest place in the ocean. Like a lot of things in childhood science classes, scientists are pretty sure about it, but they could be wrong. We’re good at mapping the ocean floor, but not as good as we are at mapping the ocean ceiling. We do know it’s gotta be close, though, and in 1960, two guys reached it in association with the U.S. Navy. Others have reached it since—including noted deep sea hobbyist James Cameron—but the 1960 guys were the first. What did they find? It was pretty slimy. Also, they thought they saw a fish but scientists since have grown convinced that they DID NOT SEE A FISH.
Anyway, the Challenger Deep is only about three times as deep as where the Titanic’s sitting. The Titanic sank in some real deep water. Ocean-average depth, and there are some remote freakin’ places in the ocean. The Titanic is 20% further below sea level than Leadville, Colorado is above sea level, and Leadville’s the highest permanent settlement in the Rockies. If you stood at the top of the Burj Khalifa and looked down, you’d still be looking down less than a quarter as far as the Titanic sank. The Titanic is *down there.*
The ocean is so big.
