Chinese submersible creates record, reaches Earth’s deepest ocean trench

China on Friday livestreamed a footage of a manned submersible parked that descended more than 10,000 metres into the Mariana Trench. It is a part of a historic mission into the deepest underwater valley on the planet, reported AFP.

The ‘Fendouzhe’ or ‘Striver’ descended more than 33,000 feet into the submarine trench in the western Pacific Ocean with three researchers on board, state broadcaster CCTV said.

According to CCTV, only a handful of people have ever reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is a crescent-shaped depression in the Earth’s crust. It is deeper than Mount Everest is high and more than 2,550 kilometres (1,600 miles) long.

In 1960, first explorers visited the trench on a brief expedition, after which there had been no missions until Hollywood director James Cameron made the first solo trip to the bottom in 2012.

Cameron described a “desolate” and “alien” environment.

The video footage broadcast by the state television, shot by a deep-sea camera, showed the green-and-white Chinese submersible moving through dark water surrounded by clouds of sediment as it slowly touched down on the seabed.

Earlier this month, Fendouzhe set a national record of 10,909 metres for manned deep-sea diving after landing in the deepest known point of the trench. The mission on November 10 beamed up the world’s first live video from Challenger Deep.

The submersible is equipped with robotic arms and will collect biological samples, its sonar “eyes” will use sound waves to identify surrounding objects.

It is carrying so much equipment that engineers added a bulbous forehead-shaped protrusion containing buoyant materials to the vessel to help maintain its balance.

Fendouzhe, China’s third deep-sea manned submersible, is observing “the many species and the distribution of living things on the seabed”, scientists on board told CCTV.

The water pressure at the bottom of the trench is a crushing eight tons per square inch, around a thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level, yet scientists have found the dark, frigid waters of the trench to be teeming with life.

The Chinese researchers will collect specimens for their work, CCTV said.