It’s merely a ceiling: the real action takes place below. But the epipelagic occupies only 5 percent of the ocean’s volume. If you see marine life and you can name it, odds are it swims in these shallows. Our knowledge about the ocean has long been concentrated in its uppermost waters, the top 200 meters known as the epipelagic zone. ![]() To reach it, you need to dive 11,000 meters: that’s 1.3 miles deeper than Mount Everest is high, in obsidian darkness, under pressures of 16,000 pounds per square inch. For one, it lies at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, a 1,500-mile-long, 43-mile-wide gash in the western Pacific seabed, near Guam. Twelve people have walked on the lunar surface, but only three had ever been to our planet’s deepest spot, known as the Challenger Deep. Yet even by Vescovo’s standards, the goals he’d set for the Five Deeps were outlandish, ranking somewhere between launching into low orbit (easier) and decamping to Mars (harder). “I realized that every day is precious, and you may not get another one-best make full use of them,” Vescovo says. The resulting crash cracked his skull in three places, shattered his jaw, broke his hand and some ribs, and provided an early whiff of mortality. He is not someone who approaches life in half measures.Īccording to Vescovo, the roots of his go-big-or-go-home philosophy can be traced back to age three, when he snuck into the family sedan, released the emergency brake, and rolled the car down the driveway into a tree. For relaxation, Vescovo studies military history, inhales science fiction, flies rescue dogs to new homes in his jet, and retreats to a workshop in his Dallas garage, where he makes fountain pens and tends to his collection of cars. Navy Reserve intelligence officer with top-secret clearance, especially right after 9/11. His proficiency in Arabic came in handy during his 20 years as a U.S. (On Mount Everest, he survived what he calls a “minor avalanche” in the Khumbu Icefall.) He’s made millions reinventing industrial processes he pilots his own Embraer Phenom jet and Eurocopter 120 helicopter. He is the 12th American to have completed the Explorer’s Grand Slam, standing atop all of the Seven Summits and skiing to the North and South Poles. At 53, he runs his own private equity firm and sits on the boards of ten companies. As a student, Vescovo earned degrees from Stanford (political science and economics), MIT (defense and arms-control studies), and Harvard (MBA). If you were to draw a Venn diagram of people who want to dive seven miles underwater, people with the skills to test-pilot a deep submersible, people with the means to fund the most technologically advanced ocean expedition in history, and people willing to devote several years of their life to such an expedition-you wouldn’t find many names in the middle. This had never been done before-which is exactly why McCallum’s client, Texas businessman Victor Vescovo, had set out to do it. ![]() Five Deeps, however, was something even more extreme: a global mission to dive a manned submersible to the deepest point in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern Oceans. He specializes in bespoke trips to far-flung places, some of which happen to be underwater, like the wreck of the Titanic. A former New Zealand national park ranger who grew up in Papua New Guinea, 54-year-old McCallum is a legendary expedition leader. “Welcome to the good ship Pressure Drop,” said Rob McCallum, who stood on deck in khaki shorts, river shoes, and a polo shirt emblazoned with the emblem of the Five Deeps Expedition, a black shield bearing the Latin phrase In Profundo: Cognitio (“In the Deep: Knowledge”). The scene was all very ordinary except for one thing, and it was visible from the palace’s front lawn: a 224-foot ship moored at the pier, bristling with heavy cranes, stacked with high-tech equipment, and carrying a mysterious $30 million cargo. Men wore their best sarongs women wore taovalas-coconut-fiber aprons-over long dresses. King Tupou VI strolled out of his oceanfront palace and down the main street of Nukualofa, capital city of the island of Tongatapu, to attend church along with the rest of his South Pacific nation. Stores were shuttered, traffic was quiet, even the airport was closed. It was a Sunday in Tonga, so the kingdom’s business had come to a halt.
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