Project Nekton (1960)

Saturday 23 January 1960. We are aboard the USS Lewis at BE 535. A latitude 11° at 18.5 minutes north. Longitude at 142 degrees at 15 minutes east. We are directly over the deepest known spot in the ocean floor. This is called Salinger Se part of the Mariana Trench. Located about 180 miles southwest of the island of Pua. Sitting alongside the Lewis is the US Navy experimental batt. She is she is she has just made history. She has made the deepest dive known to man. We have with us here Dr. Andreas Rekniter. Uh Dr. Rnik here is the scientist in charge of this entire project. Uh doctor, uh what has the bass escape? I see she just surfaced. What what has she just accomplished? >> She has just accomplished her third world record dive in the last four months. And in addition to establishing the world record, she has now descended into the greatest known depth in the crust of the earth from 37,800 ft. This is several thousand ft deeper than we had anticipated. the ocean floor being at this particular location. So, actually we have two records to our credit for today. And we are of course very happy to have our boys back up, Don Walt and Jacqu Bicard. And this is a culmination of an effort that's been going on for several years and particularly strenuous during the last four months since we have been here in the Guam and Mariana Trench area. >> Uh doctor, how long have you been with the program? I have been with the Baptist cast since 1957 when we were making a series of dives in the Mediterranean ocean before it was brought to San Diego and some operations off San Diego and finally it's alterations until we could bring it out here to Guan. Uh doctor just what is the Navy and your group at the Naval Electronics Lab? What are they trying to accomplish with this Baptist Gaff? Well, the G bath scaff has broken the deep sea barrier and now permits man to descend into the depth and to go anywhere within this great domain which has been virtually untapped and unexplored for so many years. As far as any is concerned in the Navy electronics laboratory, we have a combination of scientists and military personnel who will be using the baff as a research tool and also developing it for military applications. that is new technique, testing of equipment and the like. Uh doctor, I noticed aboard the BAS scaff are many strange instruments. Uh uh what what are some of these instruments and what are they used for? Well, they are of a variety of types because we want to study both the physical and biological characteristics of the deep sea for which we have never had an opportunity to go down into the environment and make these studies and measurements. These include temperature, water current measurement, both horizontal and vertical samples of small animals that live in the water known as plankton. also to find out what currents are present on the deep sea floor because we have been entertaining the idea of dumping radioactive waste into the great depths and in the deep basins around the world and we would like to know if there are significant might bring these materials back up to the surface. Uh fine doctor uh this is a question I suppose you're asked quite frequently. Uh do you think that you'll ever find any sea monsters down there? Yes, we really do expect to find sea monsters and someday I hope to be privileged to come face to face as well. >> Uh do you have any means down there of uh of lighting up your surrounding area or of taking pictures of any sort? Yes, we have the exterior light which illuminates the area quite frequently and will provide ample light for motion picture and also for man's eyes to view the strange creatures of the great depth where it is effectively perpetually dark all the time. Andy, you want it over or what? >> Just uh did you go on this dial? >> We went down to 6,300. That's the uncorrected death. >> 6300 balance. Uncorrected death >> in fate. Uh 37,000 and a few over 800 ft. Right. >> Uh of course depend uh that is deeper than uh anybody has ever plotted on any chart. >> We can see what will be happen. And I understand I understand also that this piece that is uh where we found the hole was not where it was supposed to be. So >> who knows maybe another dive will prove this but actually we discovered a death by going >> that's uh did you have any unusual occurrences any explosions or anything like that? Uh >> no everything was all right. Uh as you know we said before the dive will be 9 hours and actually dive was 9 9 hours and we descend relatively fast to balance you know by defending fast we left the gasoline and by compression of the gas we balance. So we arrived down with enough palaces we could follow the temperature of the gathering full drive very good temperature of the ste going well so we could practically we can say that during the descent we didn't look with the light just to see the natural light vio and during the the and we had heard the continuity of the third night to see what we could do without >> in other words that uh it was a fairly uneventful trip uh yet I imagine quite thrilling uh actually how do you feel down after this is over >> very happy to be back very happy that we did it I think this is a uh a real milestone for the Navy and for science and of course for the family. We hope that uh you'll prove something valuable by by doing this type of work and that it's not just the publicity or press done >> actually. Uh uh what is the scientific value of a of a dive such as this or what what is uh what are you trying to achieve with this vast sky? >> Well, there are two things. When my father built the body, he said he is not an astronomer. He doesn't know the truth. said as an engineer and as a facilities like to build something which is able to allow to any kind of oceanograph to go in the sea and to make any experiment that we could make. So practically the bish has to be considered as a platform underwater platform from which any kind of experiment can be made. Today we didn't make many many experiment but nevertheless the scientific point of view as I told you before the experiment there is extremely important to having some living animal and of course lon and some bioin and to the bottom and uh another very important thing is you could get a very good uh communication with by the telephone from the deep point of the to the surface is very very interesting for acoustic uh of the water to be closed. And uh we made some other interesting measurements too. But uh of course this was the first deep dive and we had to give our attention more to the technical point of view that you could make just the one that >> Don you're a submariner are you not? How does this compare driving the bass gap uh compare with driving a submarine? Well, Paul, it's quite a difference. Of course, the obvious difference is the depth, but uh I would say the uh the fact that you don't have a a big crew around you to support you and uh there's not so much a team operation while you're down. Uh it will mark the big difference. In other words, there's a for this type of work, there'd be a great premium uh placed on self-reliance, whereas in the submarine, you have a federal trained crew working with you inside. But I would like to say this, outside of the Baptist cap, when our submersible test group crew, we have some of the finest men you'll find in the Navy or in the civil service. There are combined civilian Navy scientific team working out of NEL in San Diego. And the eight or nine fellows that we have, both Navy men and civil servicemen, are one of the finest troops I've ever worked with. And uh so our whole team spirit is is in there. But unfortunately, when we go down and cut, >> Lieutenant Don Walls and Mr. jockey car. Okay. Our doctor staff has just perfected. So, when did she get down or what time? The last was at 8:22 and she arrived back at the surface at just about 5:00 this afternoon. It's about 8 and 1/2 hours beneath the depths of the sea with one half hour on the bottom at 27,800 ft. A real >> I should say it was. In fact, uh this this is the deepest anybody has ever gone, is it not? >> Oh yes. This depth exceeds the last descent which was 24,000 ft by a goodly margin. Uh I noticed uh listening to you before when you were discussing the charts that uh even our own charts and Russian claims uh did not indicate the depth that we have gone today. Yes, we've only had the means of acoustic or underwater sound to find out how deep these uh trenches are. And the accuracy of this is dependent upon the density of the water, the temperature of the water and the like. And uh consequently, the correct factor to put in there to make the measurements absolutely correct were unavailable. And this is one of the things we would like to investigate more while we are here and have the Mariana trench available to us. >> Uh thank you Dr. Remnister. Uh I am sure you were indeed proud to be head of this team that claimed a world record today in the depth of the Challenger G. >> We have the uh two hydronauts who just surfaced in the bath escape breaking all records going as deep as anyone has ever gone beneath the ocean. We have Lieutenant Don Waltz and we have Mr. Jacques Deart, the two gentlemen who descended in the Baptist for the world record. Uh Don, how how was the trip? >> Very exciting, Paul. Jo and I had a very nice ride. So, a little sorry for you people uh having to stay on this ship that's where you get seasick and rolling around. And uh outside of that, it wasn't bad. We uh we found it very smooth once we got down below 50 ft and uh didn't have a bit of trouble till we arrived at the bottom some 5 hours later. Very pleasant ride. It's very cold inside these chocolate bars and you can see we're wearing our dark clothing, very warm clothing and we're still trying to thaw out. Uh Jacques, uh by the looks of your clothing, you must have been quite cold down there. How how cold did it really get? In the ste was about 42° F. So that's two cold. I'm very agreeable too cold. Outside the water it was about between 32 and 35° F. >> Uh how long were you on the bottom? >> We're on the bottom about 20 minutes to half hour. It's hard to uh really keep track of time. You know, you kind of lose yourself when you're down there looking out of the window whether it's 400 ft or 40,000 ft. So, I' I'd say 20 minutes without checking the record. >> Uh, were you able to see anything on the bottom? >> Yes. Uh, well, actually, you should ask Jock this. Jock saw fish, man. I think it's very interesting. So we are very glad we saw a wonderful speech about kind of a soul and uh about one foot done and very interesting because everybody was asking asking whe is it fish or no at this point and so now we know at least one piece so probably more than one but at least one and we saw we su very little about one uh one pink and uh red. The bottom was absolutely soft, extremely soft. One of the most soft bottoms I ever seen in the 65 div I made here. And uh we made a perfect landing very very slowly and uh we were we have been very well integrated on the guy and finally when we touched the bottom our speed was slowly much less than one per second. And nevertheless, when we ded the bottom, it was a cloud of mud smoke which generated from the bottom and we took about more than a quarter of an hour until uh the water was clear. >> Uh how long did you actually stay on the bottom? >> Uh about 20 minutes, Paul. Not much longer. >> Did you have any lights while you're down there? Could you see around pretty well? >> Yes. Our lights were working and uh we had a very good uh view of the bottom. As Jack said, it's very unusual looking. Uh it's very white mud compared to the gray green mud we've seen in the depths before. Uh this time uh we we didn't see too much because after we landed there was quite a cloud of of dust in the water. It was stirred up by our landing and apparently it was so fine that uh the 20 minutes we were on the bottom it didn't disperse. Usually it takes only five or 10 minutes for the cloud of dust to disperse after we land. And this leads to leave a very very fine silt. Very unusual occasion. Uh how deep did you actually