Back in late December Victor Vescovo, multimillionaire co-founder and managing partner of private equity firm Insight Equity, set a record by single-handedly piloting his submersible Triton to the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean.
He just surpassed not only that depth (27,000 feet) but did so in a different ocean on the other side of the planet. Yes, Vescovo just took on the deepest part of the entire planet, the Pacific Ocean’s Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. Not only that, he set a new record, exceeding by a few tens of feet the 36,070-foot record of another wealthy guy with his own submersible, director James Cameron, which was accomplished in 2012.
Vescovo made a couple of dives to the Deep, which is just shy of 7 miles down during the last week in April and the first week of May. During his visits to the bottom, his team recorded several new species of life, but sadly the thing receiving the most media attention is the plastic candy wrapper he saw.
The last remaining dive for the Five Deeps Expedition should be a piece of cake by comparison, a mere 18,284 feet to the bottom of the Molloy Deep in the Arctic off Norway.