Slashdot Mirror
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."
This reminds me of the amazing (and sobering) story of Dave Shaw, who perished in a deep freshwater cavern trying to recover the body of a fellow diver. Quite a read, if you have 20 minutes.
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
Crazy. I've done ~380 fsw on trimix, with four different decompression gases, and it was a logistical headache. I know that one team has done the Edmund Fitzgerald on SCUBA, but at those depths the logistical issues, risks and costs escalate to the point that you have to wonder what you are gaining over surface supported surface supply or saturation diving - a much safer option than SCUBA. Stunts like the one Sheck pulled, or those by Jim Bowden, etc., are nothing more than showboating for the sake of setting records. Problem is, the record you set might not be the one you were shooting for. (Most preventable death award goes to...)
With trimix being so accessable now, it doesn't make any sense to me why anyone would continue to endanger themselves by doing deep dives on air. Actually, considering the widespread availability of nitrox, using air for any diving whatsoever doesn't really make sense anymore. I don't.
As for 1000' deep sinkholes, using a ROV is probably the right idea.