The Chinese submersible JiaoLong have set an new national record yesterday by diving 7,062 meters below sea level.
The same submersible reached 5,188 metres in a Pacific dive in July last year. And in a series of three previous dives since June 15, the submersible has gone deeper each time. Jiaolong is diving in the deepest part of the oceans: the Mariana trench. JiaoLong took samples of the sediments, water and from organism living on the seafloor.
picture taken by the submersible the day it dived to 7062 m
The submersible has the greatest depth range of any manned research vehicle in the world, the only manned expeditions to have gone deeper were the dives of the Trieste bathyscaphe in 1960 and the dive of the Deepsea Challenger in 2012, both diving to Challenger Deep. However, those vessels could not navigate horizontally along the bottom of the sea bed, severely limiting their scientific exploration capability.
(source: china daily)