For the first time in more than a decade, scientists have penetrated the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean. The deep-sea remotely operated vehicle Nereus dived 10,902 metres to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench on 31 May — the first visit since that of Japan's Kaiko submersible in 1998.
Nereus, built by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts (see Nature 437, 612–613; 2005), was dropped from the research vessel Kilo Moana, and spent ten hours on the bottom gathering samples and sending back images.
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Submersible plumbs the depths. Nature 459, 764 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/459764f
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/459764f