In a submersible called Limited Factor, a small sphere-shaped titanium device that does not allow you to stretch your legs, for the first time human beings observed with their own eyes what happens at a depth of more than 8,000 meters, off the Chilean coast. It is the Atacama trench, one of the 30 that exist in the world, but the largest. It is the deepest point in the eastern Pacific. Two Chilean scientists did it, Osvaldo Ulloa and Rubén Escribano, director and deputy director, respectively, of the Millennium Institute of Oceanography and both academics from the University of Concepcion.
The expedition was carried out last January thanks to Victor Vescovo, an American explorer and tycoon who has climbed the highest peaks on the planet, reached the two poles and who, a few years ago, made the decision to be the first person to descend to the lowest points of the five oceans. Vescovo financed the expedition and participated in it; a combination of extreme exploration and science that opens the door to a world totally unknown until now.
“The planet’s crust is built of several plates, like a puzzle. When two plates collide, a cavity is produced, which is a pit. That is to say, the trenches are the product of the collision between two plates”, explains Ulloa, shortly after finishing the 12-day expedition, where two dives of 10 hours each were made (on January 20 and 23).
The Atacama Trench is located between a dense oceanic plate, the Nazca, and a continental plate, the South American. “One sinks under the other. This is what happens off the Chilean coast. This edge occurs from Ecuador to Aysén, in the extreme south of Chile”, says Ulloa. The sinking of the Nazca plate occurs rapidly, like no other in the world: six centimeters per year, which in geological terms is enormous. This phenomenon allowed the formation of the Andes mountain range, the largest in the entire planet and, as far as science knows, which generates the largest earthquakes ever known, such as the one in 1960 in Valdivia, in the south of Chili. These characteristics have attracted the attention of researchers around the world for decades.
Off the Chilean peninsula of Mejillones, off the coast of Antofagasta, in the north of the country, a ship with 45 people traveled about 160 kilometers out to sea. On the first dive, Vescovo and Ulloa went down. “It took us three and a half hours to get there, but it was a very serene trip. From the moment one begins to dive, we were only interrupted by communication with the surface, from time to time”, describes the academic and marine biologist.
Defying the pressure, they reached a depth of 8,069 meters. “Getting to the bottom and seeing for the first time what is there was a very strong emotion. The first thing we saw was the great life there was. We knew what kind of organism we could find, but the first ones that came out to greet us were the sea cucumbers, in incredible abundance”, says Ulloa about this human feat. “What we are learning is that it would be the most biodiverse and life-giving trench, the most productive in the world,” he adds.
Below, they sailed for hours on a plain of sand and silt until they came across a wall that they began to climb aboard the Limited Factor, a kind of model car isetta of the mid-twentieth century. “We started to see geological structure, broken rock, canyons. It was something I didn’t expect. I told Víctor an analogy that appeared in my mind: this is like flying over the Andes mountain range, where you have snow, but at the same time bare rock. Meanwhile, microbial communities appeared resembling gold-colored tapestries. Seeing them was wonderful”, assures the scientist who works in microbiology and that, despite the fact that he practices diving, he had to prepare a lot for this expedition. Medical exams, a gallbladder operation, physical conditioning and yoga.
The submarine, which was made in Florida, USA, especially for Vescovo’s exploits, has three small windows that allow the crew to see, but the field of vision is limited. The machine, therefore, has high-definition cameras that record in a much larger field. They are the images that scientists carefully analyze and that will allow them many discoveries. This is what Ulloa aspires to, who in 2018 led the draft atacamexfrom the University of Concepcion and the Millennium Institute of Oceanography, with which for the first time it was possible to capture images of the bottom of the Atacama Trench through an unmanned vehicle. It was what opened the door to this new Vescovo expedition, which recognized in the Chilean community partners with scientific experience in the study of ocean trenches.
But it’s not the same. According to the Chilean doctor, “obviously one thing is to see something in a video and another, very different, is to experience it through the senses while browsing. It is an unforgettable, extraordinary, magical experience”.
Until before the American began his adventures under the sea, only three people had gone down to an ocean trench and all those expeditions went to the Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific. The first time it happened in 1960 and then the film director James Cameron did it, who went down only in 2012. But in neither case was the submersible used again, unlike the Vescovo convertible, which has made it possible to repetitive dives and that has high-tech navigation and even space. Together with the submersible, the researchers were able to use three autonomous modules with video cameras, not connected to the ship, which carry systems to obtain different types of samples.
Ulloa tells it: “When you arrive in an unknown world, you ask yourself the simplest questions you can imagine. Who lives? We are just getting to know some of the species. How are they able to survive the great pressures? They require adaptations at the genetic and molecular level to be able to resist down there. What do they eat? How dependent are they on food that falls from the surface? Since there is no light, they have to get the nutrients, the energy, from somewhere.”
The Limited Factor It no longer sails in Chilean waters, because it has set sail for other oceans. But it leaves questions and wide paths of scientific research through the images of never explored areas of the planet. “It is a treasure that we have not yet opened,” says the Chilean scientist, who as a child grew up fascinated with the stories of Jules Verne and the mysteries that the sea hides.
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