Victor Vescovo has become the first person to dive to the deepest point of the Arctic Ocean — and Discovery has it all on camera.
As part of Discovery’s upcoming documentary series “Deep Planet,” Atlantic Productions filmed the explorer’s Aug. 24 5,550-meter deep-dive, marking the fifth and final stage of The Five Deeps Expedition, which sought to put a diver at the deepest point of each of the world’s five oceans.
“If you put your mind to it and you get the right people working with you, almost anything is possible,” Vescovo says in a clip featuring footage from the dive, which you can watch above.
A premiere date for “Deep Planet” has not yet been set.
To do the dive, Vescovo had to take a plunge inside the world’s deepest-diving submersible, the DSV Limiting Factor. During a three-day outing aboard the support ship DSSV Pressure Drop, Vescovo made three dives into the Molloy Deep, a region that was formed by gas explosion craters, where the deepest point of the Arctic Ocean lies. Located 170 miles west of Svalbard, Norway, the dive took Vescovo dangerously close to the edge of a drifting pack of ice.
“I am so proud of our entire, extraordinary team that made the Five Deeps Expedition possible. It took us over four years to go from embracing the general mission to dive to the bottom of all the world’s oceans – something no government or organization has ever attempted – to building this amazing diving system and then actually doing it,” Vescovo said in a statement.
“I still can’t quite believe I had the great privilege of getting to pilot the sub down to all these places where no one has gone before,” he added. “Who says there is nothing left to explore on this planet? There is plenty to explore, and learn, in the oceans.”
Vescovo also completed four other deep-dives as part of the Five Deeps Expedition, including the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean, where he reached a depth of 8,376 meters; the South Sandwich Trench in the South Atlantic Ocean, reaching a depth of 7,434 meters; the Java Trench in the Indian Ocean, reaching a depth of 7,192 meters; and the Mariana Trench, where he completed the deepest dive in history to the bottom of Challenger Deep, reaching a record-breaking depth of 10,924 meters.