China has live streamed footage of its new manned submersible parked at the bottom of the Mariana Trench as part of a historic mission into the deepest underwater valley on the planet.
Key points:

  • Fendouzhe is being used to observe the species that live on the ocean floor
  • Its team is also researching other deep-sea material as part of China’s move to develop its deep-sea mining capabilities
  • Fendouzhe set a national record for the depth of its dive but was about 20m short of the world record

The Fendouzhe, or Striver, descended more than 10,000 metres into the submarine trench in the western Pacific Ocean with three researchers on board, state broadcaster CCTV said.
Only a handful of people have ever visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a crescent-shaped depression in the Earth’s crust that is deeper than Mount Everest is high and more than 2,550 kilometres long.
The first explorers visited the trench in 1960 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.
Fendouzhe and its crew returned to port in the city of Sanya, on China’s Hainan Island, on Saturday morning.(AFP/Xinhua: Chen Kaizi)
South China Sea dispute explained
Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea are causing deep anxiety within Australia’s defence and diplomatic circles. Here’s why Australia’s concerned about the region.
Read more
Cameron described a “desolate” and “alien” environment.
Video footage shot and relayed by a deep-sea camera this week showed the green-and-white Chinese submersible moving through dark water surrounded by clouds of sediment as it slowly touched down on the seabed.
Fendouzhe has made multiple dives in recent days.
Earlier this month, it set a national record of 10,909 metres for manned deep-sea diving after landing in the deepest known point of the trench, Challenger Deep.
On that trip, it went just shy of the 10,927-metre world record set by an American explorer in 2019.
The mission on November 10 beamed up the world’s first live video from Challenger Deep.
Seabed surveyed as China moves into deep-sea mining
The submersible, equipped with robotic arms to collect biological samples and sonar “eyes” that use sound waves to identify surrounding objects, is making repeated dives to test its capabilities.
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.
As well as testing the vessel, Beijing this month also set up a deep-sea mining training and research centre.(AFP/Xinhua: Chen Kaizi)
The water pressure at the bottom of the trench is a crushing 8 tons per square inch, around a thousand times the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
But scientists have found the dark, frigid waters of the trench to be teeming with life.
Mapping the ocean floor
A new project aims to map the entire ocean floor in just over a decade.
Read more
The Chinese researchers will collect specimens for their work, CCTV said.
Previous studies have found thriving communities of single-cell organisms surviving on organic waste that had settled on the ocean floor, but very few large animals.
The mission will also research “deep-sea materials,” CCTV said, as China pushes ahead in deep-sea mining.
Beijing this month set up a joint training and research centre with the International Seabed Authority, which will train professionals on deep-sea technology as well as researching mining for valuable minerals at the bottom of the ocean.
Fendouzhe is expected to set standards for China’s future deep-sea vessels.
“It takes more than two trials before we can call it a real success,” Zhu Min, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences involved in the mission, told CCTV on Tuesday.
ABC/AFP

You may also like