Robot Submarine Maps World's Deepest Sinkhole

holy_calamity writes "The world's deepest water-filled sinkhole has finally been mapped — by a robotic submarine whose descendants may one day swim on one of Jupiter's moons. The last attempt to find the bottom resulted in the SCUBA diving depth record and the death of a diving legend. The sub's sonar found that the divers had descended to only about 10m from the floor. The sub's mapping also indicated that the sinkhole, which is over 300m deep, could connect to even deeper caves."

Comments

Holy shit, that is deep....

[(H)elix1]

Wow. Just wow. This guy was trying for a 1000' dive? This guy did a 400' dive on air? Just as a few notes. With the PADI (recreational) diving, you can hit about 90' before you have to start dealing with decompression. 130' and you start hitting nitrogen narcosis as O2 gets toxic as the pressure increases. I've got buddies who are crazy enough to hang tanks and do 160' on air, and even they both admit that one was feeling a bit drunk/stupid from air and had been rescued by their buddy. After the third time, they gave up on the deep O2 dives.

Re:meh

[markov_chain]

A bathyscaphe has been to 35,810 feet or so.

Re:Why not for this one?

[Zeussy]

Its not the depth, its the fact that its a sinkhole. uncharted at that, you need a ROV that can work in an enclosed space and create a map to know where it is accurately and how to get back.