Credit: M. HEINZT/WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INST.

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.