The Backstory: The Mariana Trench: A hundred horrible ways to die

Explorers are a special breed—fear of the unknown and of the awful possibilities of failure don’t seem to deter them. Perfect example: the handful of people who have explored the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, are you the curious type? I mean, what motivates
an explorer? Why would someone want to go to the
deepest place on Earth? The Mariana Trench is almost seven
miles down. Would you want to travel down in a
vehicle that feels like a coffin into pitch blackness with
water temperatures around thirty six degrees except where thermal vents

(00:21):
rush out at seven hundred degrees, not knowing for sure
you'll ever resurface, and what happens to you in those
few moments if there's a catastrophic failure. Now imagine you're
doing that sixty five years ago, when communications and safety
measures were primitive at best. I'm Patty Steele surviving a
trip toward the center of the Earth. Next on the backstory,

(00:48):
The backstory is back. Really, what motivates someone to climb
into a tiny metal tube? Just a thought of that
gives me the creeps and just keep dropping underwater down
to total darkness. The Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean,
at its deepest point, is almost thirty six thousand feet

(01:09):
or almost seven miles below the surface. That is deeper
than Mount Everest is tall. Everest is the tallest mountain
in the world above sea level at twenty seven thousand feet,
over a mile less than the trench's depth. Now imagine
you're the first person to actually descend to the very
bottom of the trench, all thirty six thousand feet. You

(01:31):
have no clue what you're going to see, and you're
probably not even sure you'll ever resurface. I had a
chance just a week ago or so to visit the
Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington. It was a close
up look at the development of submarines, and it honestly
scared the heck out of me. The people going down

(01:52):
in subs back in the beginning hundreds of years ago
weren't going very deep, but it was dark, cold, and
totally unfamiliar, and they frequently never made it back up.
The Mariana Trench was actually discovered back in eighteen seventy five.
The HMS Challenger was out in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean near the Marianna Islands doing a routine depth sounding.

(02:17):
The scientists and sailors lowered a weighted rope into the
water as usual, but this time the rope kept falling
and falling and falling. It dropped to twenty seven thousand feet,
not the deepest part of the trench, as it turns out,
but crazy deep. And by the way, who knew these
guys could carry five miles of rope on a boat

(02:39):
back in those days. Well, anyway, that was the beginning
of the fascination with this remote part of our planet.
Now fast forward eighty five years. It's nineteen sixty, In fact,
sixty five years ago this week that the great Swiss
ocean explorer Jacques Picard, in twenty nine year old Navy
Lieutenant Don Walsh became the first humans ever to take

(03:01):
the plunge. They reached the deepest part of the Mariana
trench called the Challenger Deep in a tube like submersible
called the Trieste. Think about it. No one had ever
been down there, and in fact, no vessel, even without people,
had ever been down there. What's it like? While the
water pressure is about eleven hundred times greater than at

(03:22):
the surface, pretty much like an elephant standing on your
thumb ouch and absolutely no light gets down there. Plus again,
the water temperature is close to freezing except for those
seven hundred degree thermal vents. Not a picnic. It took
the card and Walsh almost five hours to get to
the bottom, but at thirty thousand feet one of the

(03:43):
outer plexiglass window panes cracked, making the treeste shake violently. Wow,
I'm as curious as anybody, but no thanks anyway. The
two spent only about twenty minutes on the seafloor, which
they said was made of a thick, ouzy material, kind
of mud like. They didn't see much with limited outside lighting,
but they did see what were probably sea cucumbers. That's

(04:07):
an eel like animal that looks a little bit like
a sweet potato or a yellow cucumber. The trip back
to the mother ship took them a little over three hours.
And here's the interesting thing. That was January of nineteen
sixty and no one went back down to the bottom
of the Mariana Trench until twenty twelve, fifty two years later,

(04:28):
when Titanic director James Cameron went down by himself. Clearly
his movie inspired his love of the deep ocean, and
his movie money allowed him to build a crazy technology
laden vessel for his trip. It was called the Deep
Sea Challenger, a twenty four foot submersible with one nine
and a half inch thick window so it could withstand

(04:50):
the pressure of the deepest place on Earth. From it,
Cameron took the first ever photos of the Challenger deep.
He says, people ask me what were the differences between
the Trieste back in nineteen sixty and the deep sea
Challenger submersibles. That's like asking Orville Wright, what was the
difference between your airplane and a seven forty seven. While

(05:13):
the Trieste and the Challenger deep both do the same
essential thing. They carry people to the deepest place in
the ocean, they can withstand great pressure, but there most
of the similarities end. Because you're talking about a half
century of technology, and I would add a literal boatload
more money. The lights and cameras alone that Cameron used

(05:35):
didn't even exist in nineteen sixty. Walsh says, we didn't
have very good stuff back then. Nothing existed. If you
needed something, you had to design it and build it yourself.
There were no catalogs or companies that specialized in providing
components for deep submersibles. But he was there in twenty
twelve to mentor Cameron for his eight hour round trip dive.

(05:58):
Walsh says, just before he shut the hatch to make
the dive, I said good luck and have fun. That
was my advice. I said, just have fun. And when
Cameron resurfaced, Walsh says, well, when he opened the hatch,
I was there too. I shook his hand and I said,
welcome to the club. There are only two of us. Cameron,
who spent three hours at the bottom, says he felt

(06:21):
completely disconnected from humanity, like he was on another planet.
He collected samples, took photos, and reflected. He said, as
you prepare for the dive over months and years, it's
all science and technology and money. But when you finally
dive to the bottom of the ocean, you have to
face the fact that there are one hundred horrible ways

(06:43):
to die. Since Cameron's March twenty six, twenty twelve trip,
a few dozen others have made the dive, but the
curiosity and guts it takes to make that kind of
trip are really powerful. Hope you like the backstory with

(07:04):
Patty Steele. I would love it if you would subscribe
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and feel free to DM me if you have a
story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Steele and on Instagram, Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis

(07:26):
Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser.
Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday
and Friday. Feel free to reach out to me with
comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty
Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening
to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history

(07:48):
you didn't know you needed to know.