EXPEDITION
The world’s first successful manned expedition to the deepest point in each of the five oceans,
and the ultimate validatation of a unique deep-sea, manned research submersible.
THE FIVE DEEPS
EXPEDITION OVERVIEW
The Five Deeps Expedition was the first to reach the deepest point in each of the Earth’s five oceans: the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic, South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean, Java Trench in the Indian Ocean, Challenger Deep in the Pacific and Molloy Deep in the Arctic.
- The expedition covered 47,000 nautical miles / 87,000 km in 10 months
- The submersible Limiting Factor completed 39 dives
- Around 50 scientific lander deployments were undertaken alongside the submersible dives
- No human had previously ever been to the bottom of the Java, Puerto Rico* or South Sandwich trenches
- No one had ever been to the bottom of Molloy Deep
- No manned submersible had ever been to Challenger Deep more than once
- No person had ever been to the summit of Mount Everest and also been to the bottom of the ocean at Challenger Deep, which occurred on this expedition.
* The French Bathyscape L'Archimede achieved 8,300m in the Puerto Rico Trench on May 6th 1964.
DIVE SCHEDULE
The Five Deeps Expedition’s primary objective was to dive to the deepest point in each of the five oceans.
Along the route, we took additional opportunities to dive areas of scientific interest or historical importance.
COMPLETE: DEC ’18
ATLANTIC
Our record-breaking first dive to the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Puerto Rico Trench. Our first dive into the Hadal Zone.
DEPTH: 8,376 m / 27,480 ft
COMPLETE: FEB ’19
SOUTHERN
Deep dive two was to the South Sandwich Trench in Antartica. It is the only sub-zero Hadal Zone on Earth.
DEPTH: 7,434 m / 24,390 ft
COMPLETE: April 2019
INDIAN
The Java Trench / Deep is a largely unexplored Hadal trench and is the location for our third Deep dive.
DEPTH: 7,192m / 23,596ft
COMPLETE: May 2019
PACIFIC
Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest place on Earth, considerably deeper than Everest is high. It was our penultimate Deep.
DEPTH: 10,925m / 35,843ft [1]
Deep Dive 5
ARCTIC
The near-freezing waters of Molloy Deep, west of Svalbard in the Abyssal Zone, was our fifth and final Deep dive.
DEPTH: 5,550m /18,209ft
Additional Dives
En Route
Supplemental to The Five Deeps, the crew took advantage of opportunities along route to survey and dive on sites of historical importance or scientific significance. Information about these dives can be found in the Media section and viewed on the Expedition Map.
1 We originally reported this figure as 10,928 meters. As is common practice, following an extensive review of bathymetric data, and multiple sensor recordings taken by Limiting Factor and the three landers, we have revised this figure to 10,925 meters +/- 4m.
