Deepest Vegemite sandwich lunch ever: 10,900+m under the sea
Late last week Tim Macdonald became the deepest-diving Australian in history.
He piloted a purpose-built deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) with New Zealander Rob MaCallum to new depths in the Mariana Trench, which is near Guam in the North Pacific Ocean.
“I was so fortunate to pilot the Limiting Factor with Rob; now the deepest diving Kiwi on the planet!” Tim says.
“But more than that I cement years of friendship and team work with the most wonderful group of humans that put me to the deepest part of the world’s oceans.
“It was a hell of a day and I’m very happy Rob and I hold the record for the deepest Vegemite sandwich lunch ever!”
The dive took the duo deeper than Mt Everest is high, to a cold, lightless, high-pressure place as inaccessible as outer space.
The pressure at this depth, due to the massive weight of the overlying water, is 1100 times that at sea level: about 16,000psi (pounds per square inch) compared with 14.7psi at the surface.
It’s like the weight of a locomotive engine stacked onto your fingernail. Extraordinary engineering is therefore required to construct a vehicle that can reach the so-called hadal depths and return in one piece.
