Diving to the bottom of the ocean. How the ocean is studied Man masters the depths

The immersion of man in the ocean initially pursued purely practical goals: repairing underwater parts of ships or port facilities, etc. And only many years later did man begin to dive into the depths of the ocean for scientific purposes. But the realization of this long-standing human dream was associated with extremely great difficulties. First of all, the person had to be isolated from the enormous pressure of the water. The pressure of a column of water 10 m high is 1 atm. But when a person is immersed to this depth, the pressure of the column of air placed above it is added to the pressure of the water, which is also equal to 1 atm. Thus, being at a depth of 10 m, a person already experiences a pressure of 2 atm.

Primitive spacesuit (engraving).

The first underwater vehicle for human immersion, the so-called diving bell, was built in 1538 in the Spanish city of Toledo and tested on the Tagus River. In 1660, the German physicist I. H. Sturm and in 1717 the English astronomer and geophysicist E. Halley built more advanced diving bells. Halley's bell, despite the fact that it was made of wood, was immersed to a depth of 20 m and had a special hole for exhaling air. In 1719, a peasant from the village of Pokrovskoe near Moscow, Efim Nikonov, proposed the first autonomous diving equipment and created a project for the first submarine, which he called a secret vessel. According to the instructions of Peter I, such a ship was built, but during testing it was damaged. After the death of Peter I, the government refused Nikonov the funds necessary to repair the ship, and the invention was forgotten.

Hydrostat "Sever-1".

Subsequently, many new designs of diving equipment appeared, but only in the last quarter of the 19th century. managed to create such technical devices that allowed a person to work freely under water. In 1882, the first diving school in Russia was opened, which played a big role in the development of diving. In 1930, our divers descended to depths of 100-110 m in special spacesuits. Currently, diving suits allow a person to dive to depths of more than 200 m. These heavy diving suits are designed for rescue, repair and other work.

Explorers of the seas and oceans needed lightweight diving devices that would provide greater human mobility under water. Such devices - scuba tanks - were created in the 40s of the 20th century. French engineers. The record depth of human scuba diving is about 100 m.

But neither heavy nor even lighter diving suits ensure that a person can dive to great depths.

Bathyscaphe "Trieste".

Scientists and engineers from many countries have developed underwater vehicles - hydrostats and bathyspheres, which were lowered from the ship on steel cables.

In the USSR, the hydrostat was built in 1923, and for many years work was carried out on it in the Black Sea and the Gulf of Finland. In subsequent years, improved hydrostats GKS-6, Sever-1, etc. were built in our country. With their help, it was possible to dive to a depth of 600 m. Hydrostats were also built in the USA, Italy and other countries.

In the 40s, new underwater vehicles appeared - bathyscaphes, which could independently dive and emerge from great depths. The first bathyscaphe was created in 1948 by the Swiss O. Picard and named FNRS-2. The first dive on it was made in the Atlantic Ocean to a depth of only 25 m. The second descent was carried out without people to a depth of 1400 m.

In August 1953, J. Guo and P. Wilm dived to a depth of 2100 m on the bathyscaphe FNRS-3. This record lasted only a month and a half. At the end of September 1953, O. Picard and his son J. Picard on the bathyscaphe "Trieste" off the coast of West Africa reached a depth of 3150 m. But in February 1954, J. Guo and P. Wilm in the same area of ​​​​the ocean plunged to a depth 4050 m and set a new record.

In 1957, the United States purchased and refitted Trieste, and in 1959 a new series of record dives began. On November 15, 1959, in the Mariana Islands of the Pacific Ocean, Trieste reached a depth of 5530 m, and on January 8, 1960 - 7025 m. Jacques Picard participated in both of these dives, in the first case with Andreas Rechnitzer and in the second with Don Walsham. January 23, 1960 marked the greatest event in the history of man's penetration into the depths of the ocean. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh dived on the bathyscaphe Trieste in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean and reached the bottom at a depth of 10,912 m (the maximum depth of the World Ocean in this trench is 11,022 m). Trieste remained at the bottom of the Mariana Trench for 30 minutes. Scientists have seen with their own eyes that, despite the enormous pressure (1100 atm), the deepest layers of ocean water are inhabited by living organisms. The researchers measured the temperature (+ 3.0 ° C) and radioactivity of the water at the very bottom of the depression.

In the USSR, USA, Japan and other countries, scientists and engineers also worked on the creation of controlled underwater vehicles for exploring medium depths. Scientific oceanographic submarines and mesoscapes became such devices. So far, submarines have become more widespread. The first of them, “Severyanka,” was equipped in the USSR and has been conducting research in the Barents Sea since 1958.

In the USA, in the 60s, two-seater small boats “Kabmarin” and “Nautilette” were built for biological and geological research at shallow depths. The capacity of the submarine "Alvin" is the same; its diving depth reaches 1850 m. The four-seater boat "Aluminaut" reaches 4500 m. In Japan, in 1960, a four-seater research boat "Kuro-Sio" was built, designed for diving up to 200 m , and in 1968 the four-seater research submarine Shinkai. It is designed for oceanographic, fishery and geological observations at depths of up to 600 m.

Another type of underwater vehicle, the two-seater “diving saucer” Denise, was built in France. This apparatus is a compact flat design with a diameter of only 2.85 m and a height of 1.4 m. It is transported on a ship and submerged in water as needed. "Denise" can swim at depths of up to 300 m and at a distance of 3 miles (5.5 km).

Man's conquest of the ocean depths was extremely important, especially for the study of living organisms and the geology of the bottom. With the help of underwater vehicles, new data were obtained on the optical and acoustic properties of water in the oceans and seas.

The main operation in oceanography is the implementation of a hydrological station. Each oceanographic vessel is equipped with a winch that lowers instruments to the maximum possible depth, and during the station, physicists measure water temperature and take samples at standard, internationally agreed depths (horizons). When the ship is stationary and, as far as possible, held motionless with the help of screws, a series of instruments are lowered overboard so that the last of them is at the maximum depth, in other words, at the very bottom. When the operation is completed, the next series is lowered and the overlying layer adjacent to the first is examined, and so on until they reach the very surface.

During the hydrological station, two classic oceanographic instruments are used - the tipping bottle and the tipping thermometer. These are the oldest instruments: oceanographers from all countries have been using them for about ninety years.

Schematically, a tilting bathometer consists of a metal tube ending in two external valves. They leave it open. A special weight sent from the surface hits the valve, slams it shut and turns the bottle over on a lever device. The bathometer must turn over because two tilting thermometers are attached to its outer side, arranged in such a way as to measure the temperature at the overturning level. The mercury column of thermometers has a constriction where the mercury breaks; The temperature is determined by the volume of separated mercury.

An ordinary thermometer, placed in the same glass shell, or tube, allows you to correct the error that arises because the readings are recorded on board the ship, that is, at a different temperature than at the measurement point. The thick-walled glass tube in which both thermometers are enclosed protects them from the effects of pressure at depth.

There is another type of tilt thermometer in which the protective tube is open at one end. Such a thermometer, exposed to the pressure of the surrounding water, as a result of compression of the glass, registers a temperature that differs from the temperature (shown by a protected thermometer. Then, knowing the compression coefficient of the glass and the volume of released mercury, when comparing both temperatures, we obtain the pressure value, in other words - the depth at which the measurement was made. In such cases, tipping bottles are equipped with two sleeves for tilting thermometers: one for the protected, the other for the unprotected. When the series is hoisted on board, the temperature is recorded, and the water from the bottles is poured into small bottles and stored for subsequent analyses.

Of all such analyses, one is the main one, and the rest are additional. Since sea water contains an average of 35 grams of salts per liter, it is necessary to know its salinity, because only by knowing this value and temperature can the density of WATER be accurately calculated. And the concept of density is the cornerstone of oceanography and underlies all hypotheses about water masses and all dynamic calculations of the movement of these water masses.

Until recently, salinity was determined by the method of chemical analysis, developed at the beginning of the century by the Dane Knudsen. This method provided an accuracy of up to +0.01°% (ppm) - quite sufficient for most dynamic calculations. Over the past ten years, the British and Americans have created and introduced into industry laboratory instruments that operate on the principle of electromagnetic induction and determine salinity with the same accuracy as the Knudsen method. The advantage of these electric salinity meters is that, firstly, they can be used on board a ship, and secondly, they allow continuous measurements. Undoubtedly, the future belongs to this method.

Two years ago, an even more practical device was proposed - a probe lowered from the surface to the bottom. It measures temperature, chlorine content and pressure. All continuous measurements of these three parameters are recorded by a recorder on board, and then the results obtained are fed into an electronic computer, which calculates the distribution of temperature and salinity depending on depth. It would seem that the fuss with recording thermometer readings, taking water samples and analyzes is over. Finally, marine physicists have an ideal device!.. However, the probe has a big drawback - it is incredibly expensive. Therefore, many oceanographers are skeptical about this new product. But, in addition to the high price, it has another drawback - it requires an electrical cable, which is inconvenient to handle and quickly breaks down.

The design idea should follow the path of creating an autonomous probe that freely sinks to the bottom, which, as it dives, will send information on board in the form of an ultrasonic code. Having reached the bottom, the probe must dump ballast and rise to the surface. In our age of electronic technology, the possibility of creating such a probe is quite real.

Of all the analyzes of seawater, only the determination of chlorine content can be carried out in situ (continuously) using an electronic device. When it comes to determining other components of seawater, oceanographers are still at the mercy of sampling instruments.

For biological research and to confirm some physical theories about the distribution of water masses in the ocean, it is necessary to know the content of dissolved oxygen in sea water. This is done using the old Winkler method. Since the dissolved oxygen content of a sample changes rapidly, the first stage of analysis must be performed on board, immediately after taking the sample. The second stage is carried out either in the ship's laboratory, if there is one, or on shore. Currently, electronic devices are used to determine the content of dissolved oxygen in seawater, but, on the one hand, their accuracy is still completely insufficient, and on the other hand, the sensors of these devices have never been immersed to medium or great depths.

Biologists, in addition to dissolved oxygen, are interested in the content of nutrient salts in sea water: phosphates, nitrates, silica, on which life in the ocean depends. To determine these elements, laboratory chemical analyzes are performed or the photometric method is used.

For some special studies, oceanographers use tipping bottles of a different type than those described above. They are made of metal or plastic (the latter are used mainly for determining the content of dissolved oxygen), and their capacities vary.

To study radioactivity - both natural and resulting from radioactive fallout - very large bathometers are used; the system for closing them depends on the ingenuity of the designer.

The temperature of ocean water is very variable, especially in the upper layers. Therefore, it is interesting to determine it at points located as close to each other as possible.

However, since the ship cannot be stopped too often for hydrological stations, oceanographers use a bathythermograph, which is lowered from the ship while underway. Bathythermograph. The design of this device allows it to be immersed vertically in water, despite the movement of the vessel, and immediately determine the temperature distribution in depth. The accuracy of the bathythermograph is not very high - no more than 1/10 of a degree. It is used by the Navy in adjusting the speed of sound to detect submarines by sonar.

The world ocean, covering 71% of the Earth's surface, amazes with the complexity and diversity of the processes developing in it.

From the surface to the greatest depths, ocean waters are in continuous motion. These complex movements of water, from huge ocean currents to the smallest eddies, are excited by tidal forces and serve as a manifestation of the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean.

The ocean water mass at low latitudes accumulates heat received from the sun and transfers this heat to high latitudes. The redistribution of heat, in turn, excites certain atmospheric processes. Thus, in the area of ​​convergence of cold and warm currents in the North Atlantic, powerful cyclones arise. They reach Europe and often determine the weather throughout its entire territory up to the Urals.

The living matter of the ocean is very unevenly distributed across the depths. In different areas of the ocean, biomass depends on climatic conditions and the supply of nitrogen and phosphorus salts to surface waters. The ocean is home to a great variety of plants and animals. From bacteria and single-celled green algae of phytoplankton to the largest mammals on earth - whales, whose weight reaches 150 tons. All living organisms form a single biological system with their own laws of existence and evolution.

Loose sediments accumulate very slowly on the ocean floor. This is the first stage in the formation of sedimentary rocks. In order for geologists working on land to correctly decipher the geological history of a given territory, it is necessary to study in detail modern processes of sedimentation.

As it turned out in recent decades, the earth's crust under the ocean is highly mobile. Mountain ranges, deep rift valleys, and volcanic cones form on the ocean floor. In a word, the bottom of the ocean “lives” violently, and often such strong earthquakes occur there that huge devastating tsunami waves quickly run across the surface of the ocean.

Trying to explore the nature of the ocean - this grandiose sphere of the earth, scientists encounter certain difficulties, to overcome which they have to use the methods of all the basic natural sciences: physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, geology. Oceanology is usually spoken of as a union of various sciences, a federation of sciences united by the subject of research. This approach to the study of the nature of the ocean is reflected in the natural desire to penetrate deeper into its secrets and the urgent need to deeply and comprehensively know the characteristic features of its nature.

These problems are very complex, and they have to be solved by a large team of scientists and specialists. In order to imagine exactly how this is done, let’s consider the three most current areas of oceanological science:

• interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere;
• biological structure of the ocean;
• geology of the ocean floor and its mineral resources.

The oldest Soviet research vessel “Vityaz” has completed many years of tireless work. It arrived at the Kaliningrad seaport. The 65th farewell flight, which lasted more than two months, ended.

Here is the last “running” entry in the ship’s log of a veteran of our oceanographic fleet, which over thirty years of voyages left more than a million miles behind the stern.

In a conversation with a Pravda correspondent, the head of the expedition, Professor A. A. Aksenov, noted that the 65th flight of the Vityaz, like all previous ones, was successful. Comprehensive research in the deep-sea areas of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean has yielded new scientific data that will enrich our knowledge of marine life.

Vityaz will be temporarily based in Kaliningrad. It is expected that it will then become the basis for the creation of a museum of the World Ocean.

For several years, scientists from many countries have been working on the international project PIGAP (program for the study of global atmospheric processes). The goal of this work is to find a reliable method for weather forecasting. There is no need to explain how important this is. It will be possible to know in advance about drought, floods, rainfall, strong winds, heat and cold...

So far no one can give such a forecast. What is the main difficulty? It is impossible to accurately describe with mathematical equations the processes of interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere.

Almost all the water that falls on land in the form of rain and light enters the atmosphere from the surface of the ocean. Ocean waters in the tropics become very hot, and currents carry this heat to high latitudes. Huge vortices arise over the ocean - cyclones, which determine the weather on land.

The ocean is the kitchen of the weather... But there are very few permanent weather observation stations in the ocean. These are a few islands and several automatic floating stations.

Scientists are trying to build a mathematical model of the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere, but it must be real and accurate, and for this there is a lack of data on the state of the atmosphere over the ocean.

A solution was found in very accurately and continuously taking measurements in a small area of ​​the ocean from ships, airplanes and meteorological satellites. Such an international experiment called “Tropex” was carried out in the tropical Atlantic Ocean in 1974, and very important data were obtained for constructing a mathematical model.

It is necessary to know the entire system of currents in the ocean. Currents carry heat (and cold), nutritious mineral salts necessary for the development of life. A long time ago, sailors began to collect information about currents. It began in the 15th-16th centuries, when sailing ships entered the open ocean. Nowadays, all sailors know that detailed maps of surface currents exist and use them. However, in the last 20-30 years, discoveries have been made that have shown how inaccurate current maps are and how complex the overall picture of ocean circulation is.

In the equatorial zone of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, powerful deep currents have been explored, measured and mapped. They are known as the Cromwell Current in the Pacific and the Lomonosov Current in the Atlantic Oceans.

In the western Atlantic Ocean, the deep Antilo-Guiana countercurrent was discovered. And under the famous Gulf Stream was the Counter-Gulf Stream.

In 1970, Soviet scientists conducted a very interesting study. A series of buoy stations were installed in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. At each station, currents were continuously recorded at various depths. The measurements lasted six months, and hydrological surveys were periodically carried out in the measurement area to obtain data on the general pattern of water movement. After processing and summarizing the measurement materials, a very important general pattern emerged. It turns out that the previously existing idea of ​​​​the relatively uniform nature of the constant trade wind current, which is excited by northern trade winds, does not correspond to reality. This stream, this huge river with liquid banks does not exist.

Huge vortices and whirlpools, tens and even hundreds of kilometers in size, move in the zone of the trade wind current. The center of such a vortex moves at a speed of about 10 cm/s, but at the periphery of the vortex the flow speed is much higher. This discovery of Soviet scientists was later confirmed by American researchers, and in 1973 similar vortices were traced in Soviet expeditions working in the North Pacific Ocean.

In 1977-1978 A special experiment was carried out to study the vortex structure of currents in the Sargasso Sea region in the western North Atlantic. Over a large area, Soviet and American expeditions continuously measured currents for 15 months. This huge material has not yet been fully analyzed, but the formulation of the problem itself required massive, specially designed measurements.

Particular attention to the so-called synoptic eddies in the ocean is due to the fact that it is the eddies that carry the largest share of the current energy. Consequently, their careful study can bring scientists significantly closer to solving the problem of long-term weather forecasting.

Another interesting phenomenon associated with ocean currents has been discovered in recent years. Very stable so-called rings (rings) have been discovered to the east and west of the powerful ocean current Gulf Stream. Like a river, the Gulf Stream has strong bends (meanders). In some places, the meanders close, and a ring is formed in which the temperature of the bottom differs sharply at the periphery and in the center. Such rings have also been traced on the periphery of the powerful Kuroshio Current in the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean. Special observations of rings in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans showed that these formations are very stable, maintaining a significant difference in water temperature on the periphery and inside the ring for 2-3 years.

In 1969, special probes were used for the first time to continuously measure temperature and salinity at various depths. Before this, the temperature was measured with mercury thermometers at several points at different depths, and water was raised from the same depths in bathometers. Then the salinity of the water was determined and the salinity and temperature values ​​were plotted on a graph. The distribution of these water properties over depth was obtained. Measurements at individual points (discrete) did not even allow us to assume that the temperature of water changes with depth as complexly as shown by continuous measurements with a probe.

It turned out that the entire water mass from the surface to great depths is divided into thin layers. The difference in temperature of adjacent horizontal layers reaches several tenths of a degree. These layers, from several centimeters to several meters thick, sometimes exist for several hours, sometimes disappear in a few minutes.

The first measurements, made in 1969, seemed to many to be a random phenomenon in the ocean. It is impossible, the skeptics said, that the mighty ocean waves and currents do not mix the water. But in subsequent years, when sounding of the water column with precise instruments was carried out throughout the ocean, it turned out that the thin-layered structure of the water column was found everywhere and always. The reasons for this phenomenon are not entirely clear. So far they explain it this way: for one reason or another, numerous fairly clear boundaries appear in the water column, separating layers with different densities. At the boundary of two layers of different densities, internal waves very easily arise that mix the water. In the process of destruction of internal waves, new homogeneous layers appear, and the boundaries of the layers are formed at other depths. So this process is repeated many times, the depth and thickness of layers with sharp boundaries change, but the general character of the water column remains unchanged.

In 1979, the experimental phase of the International Program for the Study of Global Atmospheric Processes (PIGAP) began. Several dozen ships, automatic observation stations in the ocean, special aircraft and meteorological satellites, this whole vast array of research equipment operates throughout the entire World Ocean. All participants in this experiment work according to a single agreed program so that, by comparing the materials of the international experiment, it is possible to build a global model of the state of the atmosphere and ocean.

If we take into account that in addition to the general task of finding a reliable method for long-term weather forecast, it is necessary to know many particular facts, then the general task of ocean physics will seem very, very complicated: measurement methods, instruments, the operation of which is based on the use of the most modern electronic circuits, are quite difficult processing of received information with the mandatory use of a computer; construction of very complex and original mathematical models of processes developing in the water column of the ocean and at the boundary with the atmosphere; conducting extensive experiments in characteristic areas of the ocean. These are the general features of modern research in the field of ocean physics.

Particular difficulties arise when studying living matter in the ocean. Relatively recently, the necessary materials for a general characterization of the biological structure of the ocean have been obtained.

Only in 1949 was life discovered at depths of more than 6000 m. Later, the deep-sea fauna - the ultra-abyssal fauna - turned out to be a very interesting object of special research. At such depths, living conditions are very stable on a geological time scale. Based on the similarity of the ultra-abyssal fauna, it is possible to establish the former connections of individual ocean basins and restore the geographical conditions of the geological past. For example, by comparing the deep-sea fauna of the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, scientists have determined that there was no Isthmus of Panama in the geological past.

Somewhat later, an astonishing discovery was made - a new type of animal was discovered in the ocean - pogonophora. A thorough study of their anatomy and systematic classification formed the content of one of the outstanding works in modern biology - the monograph “Pogonophores” by A. V. Ivanov. These two examples show how difficult it has been to study the distribution of life in the ocean and, even more so, the general patterns of functioning of the biological systems of the ocean.

By comparing disparate facts and comparing the biology of the main groups of plants and animals, scientists have come to important conclusions. The total biological production of the World Ocean turned out to be somewhat less than the similar value characterizing the entire land area, despite the fact that the ocean area is 2.5 times larger than the land. This is due to the fact that areas of high biological productivity are the periphery of the ocean and areas of rising deep waters. The rest of the ocean is an almost lifeless desert, in which only large predators can be found. Only small coral atolls turn out to be isolated oases in the ocean desert.

Another important finding concerns the general characteristics of ocean food webs. The first link in the food chain is the single-celled green algae phytoplankton. The next link is zooplankton, then planktivorous fish and predators. Dairy animals - benthos, which are also food for fish - are essential.

Reproduction at each level of food value is such that the produced biomass is 10 times higher than its consumption. In other words, 90%, for example, of phytoplankton dies naturally and only 10% serves as food for zooplankton. It has also been established that zooplankton crustaceans perform vertical daily migrations in search of food. More recently, it was possible to discover clots of bacteria in the diet of zooplankton crustaceans, and this type of food accounted for up to 30% of the total volume. The general result of modern research in ocean biology is that an approach has been found and the first block mathematical model of the ecological system of the open ocean has been constructed. This is the first step towards artificial regulation of the biological productivity of the ocean.

What methods do biologists use in the ocean?

First of all, a variety of fishing gear. Small plankton organisms are caught with special cone nets. As a result of fishing, an average amount of plankton is obtained in weight units per unit volume of water. These nets can be used to fish individual horizons of the water column or to “filter” water from a given depth to the surface. Bottom animals are caught with various tools towed along the bottom. Fish and other nekton organisms are caught by mid-water trawls.

Unique methods are used to study the nutritional relationships of different groups of plankton. Organisms are “marked” with radioactive substances and then the amount and rate of grazing in the next link of the food chain is determined.

In recent years, physical methods for indirectly determining the amount of plankton in water have been used. One of these methods is based on the use of a laser beam, which probes the surface layer of water in the ocean and provides data on the total amount of phytoplankton. Another physical method is based on the use of the ability of plankton organisms to glow - bioluminescence. A special probe bathometer is immersed in water, and as it dives, the intensity of bioluminescence is recorded as an indicator of the amount of plankton. These methods very quickly and completely characterize the distribution of plankton at multiple sounding points.

An important element in studying the biological structure of the ocean is chemical research. The content of nutrients (mineral salts of nitrogen and phosphorus), dissolved oxygen and a number of other important characteristics of the habitat of organisms are determined by chemical methods. Careful chemical determinations are especially important when studying highly productive coastal areas - upwelling zones. Here, with regular and strong winds from the coast, a strong accumulation of water occurs, accompanied by the rise of deep waters and their distribution in the shallow area of ​​the shelf. Deep waters contain dissolved amounts of significant amounts of mineral salts of nitrogen and phosphorus. As a result, phytoplankton flourishes in the upwelling zone and, ultimately, an area of ​​commercial fish aggregations is formed.

Prediction and registration of the specific nature of the habitat in the upwelling zone are carried out using chemical methods. Thus, in biology, the question of acceptable and applicable research methods is being resolved in a comprehensive manner in our time. While widely using traditional methods of biology, researchers are increasingly using methods of physics and chemistry. The processing of materials, as well as their generalization in the form of optimized models, is carried out using the methods of modern mathematics.

Over the past 30 years, so many new facts have been obtained in the study of ocean geology that many traditional ideas had to be radically changed.

Just 30 years ago, measuring the depth of the ocean floor was extremely difficult. It was necessary to lower a heavy lot into the water with a load suspended on a long steel cable. Moreover, the results were often erroneous, and the points with measured depths were hundreds of kilometers apart from each other. Therefore, the prevailing idea was of the vast expanses of the ocean floor as gigantic plains.

In 1937, a new method of measuring depths was used for the first time, based on the effect of reflection of a sound signal from the bottom.

The principle of measuring depth with an echo sounder is very simple. A special vibrator mounted in the lower part of the ship's hull emits pulsating acoustic signals. The signals are reflected from the bottom surface and captured by the receiving device of the echo sounder. The round trip time of the signal depends on the depth, and a continuous profile of the bottom is drawn on the tape as the ship moves. A series of such profiles, separated by relatively short distances, makes it possible to draw lines of equal depths on the map - isobaths - and depict the bottom relief.

Depth measurements with echo sounders changed scientists' previous understanding of the topography of the ocean floor.

What does it look like?

A strip stretches from the coast, which is called the continental shelf. Depths on the continental shelf usually do not exceed 200-300 m.

In the upper zone of the continental shelf there is a continuous and rapid transformation of the relief. The shore retreats under the pressure of the waves, and at the same time large accumulations of debris appear under the water. It is here that large deposits of sand, gravel, and pebbles are formed - excellent building material, crushed and sorted by nature itself. Various spits, embankments, bars, in turn, build up the coast in another place, separate lagoons, and block river mouths.

In the tropical zone of the ocean, where the water is very clean and warm, grandiose coral structures grow - coastal and barrier reefs. They stretch for hundreds of kilometers. Coral reefs provide shelter for a great variety of organisms and together form a complex and extraordinary biological system. In a word, the upper shelf zone “lives” with a vibrant geological life.

At depths of 100-200 m, geological processes seem to freeze. The relief becomes leveled, and there are many bedrock outcrops at the bottom. The destruction of rocks is very slow.

At the outer edge of the shelf, facing the ocean, the drop of the bottom surface becomes steeper. Sometimes the slopes reach 40-50°. This is a continental slope. Its surface is dissected by underwater canyons. Intense and sometimes catastrophic processes take place here. Silt accumulates on the slopes of underwater canyons. At times, the stability of the accumulations is suddenly broken, and a mud flow falls along the bottom of the canyon.

The mud flow reaches the mouth of the canyon, and here the bulk of sand and large debris, deposited, forms an alluvial cone - an underwater delta. A turbidity current emerges beyond the continental foot. Often, individual alluvial fans are connected, and a continuous strip of loose sediments of great thickness is formed at the continental foot.

53% of the bottom area is occupied by the ocean floor, an area that until recently was considered a plain. In fact, the relief of the ocean floor is quite complex: uplifts of various structures and origins divide it into huge basins. The size of the oceanic basins can be estimated from at least one example: the northern and eastern basins of the Pacific Ocean occupy an area larger than all of North America.

Over a large area of ​​the basins themselves, hilly terrain dominates; sometimes there are individual seamounts. The height of the ocean mountains reaches 5-6 km, and their peaks often rise above the water.

In other areas, the ocean floor is crossed by huge, gentle swells several hundred kilometers wide. Typically, volcanic islands are located on these ramparts. In the Pacific Ocean, for example, there is the Hawaiian Wall, on which there is a chain of islands with active volcanoes and lava lakes.

Volcanic cones rise from the ocean floor in many places. Sometimes the top of a volcano reaches the surface of the water, and then an island appears. Some of these islands are gradually being destroyed and hidden under water.

Several hundred volcanic cones have been discovered in the Pacific Ocean with obvious traces of wave action on their flat tops, submerged to a depth of 1000-1300 m.

The evolution of volcanoes may be different. Reef-building corals settle at the top of the volcano. As the corals slowly sink, they build up the reef, and over time, a ring island is formed - an atoll with a lagoon in the middle. The growth of a coral reef can continue for a very long time. Drilling has been carried out on some Pacific atolls to determine the thickness of the coralline limestones. It turned out that it reaches 1500. This means that the top of the volcano sank slowly - over approximately 20 thousand years.

By studying the bottom topography and the geological structure of the solid crust of the ocean, scientists came to some new conclusions. The earth's crust under the ocean floor turned out to be much thinner than on the continents. On continents, the thickness of the Earth's solid shell - the lithosphere - reaches 50-60 km, and in the ocean it does not exceed 5-7 km.

It also turned out that the lithosphere of land and ocean differs in rock composition. Under the layer of loose rocks - products of destruction of the land surface, there is a thick granite layer, which is underlain by a basalt layer. In the ocean, there is no granite layer, and loose sediments lie directly on the basalts.

Even more important was the discovery of a vast system of mountain ranges on the ocean floor. The mountain system of mid-ocean ridges stretches across all oceans for 80,000 km. In size, underwater ridges are comparable only to the greatest mountains on land, for example the Himalayas. The crests of submarine ridges are usually cut lengthwise by deep gorges, which have been called rift valleys, or rifts. Their continuation can be traced on land.

Scientists have realized that the global rift system is a very important phenomenon in the geological development of our entire planet. A period of careful study of the rift zone system began, and such significant data were soon obtained that there was a sharp change in ideas about the geological history of the Earth.

Now scientists have again turned to the half-forgotten hypothesis of continental drift, expressed by the German scientist A. Wegener at the beginning of the century. A careful comparison of the contours of the continents separated by the Atlantic Ocean was made. At the same time, geophysicist Ya. Bullard combined the contours of Europe and North America, Africa and South America not along coastlines, but along the midline of the continental slope, approximately along an isobath of 1000 m. The outlines of both shores of the ocean coincided so accurately that even inveterate skeptics could not doubt in the actual enormous horizontal movement of the continents.

Particularly convincing were the data obtained during geomagnetic surveys in the area of ​​mid-ocean ridges. It turned out that the erupted basaltic lava gradually moves to both sides of the ridge crest. Thus, direct evidence was obtained of the expansion of the oceans, the spreading of the earth's crust in the rift region and, in accordance with this, continental drift.

Deep drilling in the ocean, which has been carried out for several years from the American vessel Glomar Challenger, has again confirmed the fact of the expansion of the oceans. They even established the average expansion of the Atlantic Ocean - several centimeters per year.

It was also possible to explain the increased seismicity and volcanism on the periphery of the oceans.

All this new data served as the basis for creating a hypothesis (often called a theory, its arguments are so convincing) of the tectonics (mobility) of lithospheric plates.

The original formulation of this theory belongs to the American scientists G. Hess and R. Dietz. Later it was developed and supplemented by Soviet, French and other scientists. The meaning of the new theory comes down to the idea that the rigid shell of the Earth - the lithosphere - is divided into separate plates. These plates experience horizontal movements. The forces that set lithospheric plates in motion are generated by convective currents, i.e., flows of the deep fiery liquid substance of the Earth.

The spreading of plates to the sides is accompanied by the formation of mid-ocean ridges, on the crests of which gaping rift cracks appear. Basaltic lava flows through rifts.

In other areas, lithospheric plates come closer and collide. In these collisions, as a rule, the edge of one plate moves under the other. On the periphery of the oceans, such modern underthrust zones are known, where strong earthquakes often occur.

The theory of plate tectonics is supported by many facts obtained over the past fifteen years in the ocean.

The general basis of modern ideas about the internal structure of the Earth and the processes occurring in its depths is the cosmogonic hypothesis of Academician O. Yu. Schmidt. According to his ideas, the Earth, like other planets of the solar system, was formed by the sticking together of the cold substance of a dust cloud. Further growth of the Earth occurred by capturing new portions of meteorite matter while passing through the dust cloud that once surrounded the Sun. As the planet grew, heavy (iron) meteorites sank and light (stone) meteorites floated up. This process (separation, differentiation) was so powerful that inside the planet the substance melted and was divided into a refractory (heavy) part and a fusible (lighter) part. At the same time, radioactive heating was also operating in the inner parts of the Earth. All these processes led to the formation of a heavy inner core, a lighter outer core, a lower and upper mantle. Geophysical data and calculations show that enormous energy lurks in the bowels of the Earth, truly capable of decisive transformations of the solid shell - the lithosphere.

Based on the cosmogonic hypothesis of O. 10. Schmidt, Academician A.P. Vinogradov developed a geochemical theory of the origin of the ocean. A.P. Vinogradov, through precise calculations, as well as experiments to study the differentiation of the molten substance of meteorites, established that the water mass of the ocean and the Earth’s atmosphere was formed in the process of degassing of the substance of the upper mantle. This process continues in our time. In the upper mantle, continuous differentiation of matter actually occurs, and the most fusible part of it penetrates to the surface of the lithosphere in the form of basaltic lava.

Ideas about the structure of the earth's crust and its dynamics are gradually becoming more precise.

In 1973 and 1974 An unusual underwater expedition was carried out in the Atlantic Ocean. In a pre-selected area of ​​the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, deep-sea dives of submersibles were carried out and a small but very important section of the ocean floor was explored in detail.

Exploring the bottom from surface vessels during the preparation of the expedition, scientists studied the bottom topography in detail and discovered an area within which there was a deep gorge cutting along the crest of an underwater ridge - a rift valley. In the same area there is a transform fault, clearly expressed in the relief, transverse to the crest of the ridge and the rift gorge.

This typical bottom structure - a rift gorge, a transform fault, young volcanoes - was examined from three underwater vessels. The expedition included the French bathyscaphe "Archimedes" with the special vessel "Marseille Le Bihan" supporting its work, the French submarine "Siana" with the vessel "Norua", the American research vessel "Knorr", the American submarine "Alvin" with the vessel "Lulu" .

A total of 51 deep-sea dives were made over two seasons.

When performing deep-sea dives up to 3000 m, the crews of underwater vessels encountered some difficulties.

The first thing that initially greatly complicated the research was the inability to determine the location of the underwater vehicle in conditions of highly dissected terrain.

The underwater vehicle had to move while maintaining a distance from the bottom of no more than 5 m. On steep slopes and crossing narrow valleys, the bathyscaphe and submarines could not use the acoustic beacon system, since underwater mountains prevented the passage of signals. For this reason, an on-board system was put into operation on support vessels, with the help of which the exact location of the underwater vessel was determined. The support vessel monitored the underwater vehicle and controlled its movement. Sometimes there was a direct danger to the underwater vehicle, and one day such a situation arose.

On July 17, 1974, the Alvin submarine literally got stuck in a narrow crack and spent two and a half hours trying to get out of the trap. The Alvin crew showed amazing resourcefulness and composure - after leaving the trap they did not surface, but continued to explore for another two hours.

In addition to direct observations and measurements from submersibles, photographing and collecting samples, drilling was carried out in the expedition area from the famous special purpose vessel Glomar Challenger.

Finally, geophysical measurements were regularly taken from the research vessel Knorr, complementing the work of submersible observers.

As a result, 91 km of route observations, 23 thousand photographs were made in a small area of ​​the bottom, more than 2 tons of rock samples were collected and more than 100 video recordings were made.

The scientific results of this expedition (known as Famous) are very important. For the first time, underwater vehicles were used not just to observe the underwater world, but for purposeful geological research, similar to the detailed surveys that geologists conduct on land.

For the first time, direct evidence of the movement of lithospheric plates along boundaries was obtained. In this case, the boundary between the American and African plates was explored.

The width of the zone, which is located between the moving lithospheric plates, was determined. Unexpectedly, it turned out that this zone, where the earth’s crust forms a system of cracks and where basaltic lava flows onto the bottom surface, that is, a new earth’s crust is formed, this zone is less than a kilometer wide.

A very important discovery was made on the slopes of underwater hills. In one of the dives of the Siana submersible, fissured loose fragments were discovered on a hillside, very different from various fragments of basaltic lava. After the surfacing of the Siana, it was determined that it was manganese ore. A more detailed examination of the area where manganese ores are distributed led to the discovery of an ancient hydrothermal deposit on the surface of the bottom. Repeated dives yielded new materials proving that, in fact, due to the emergence of thermal waters from the depths of the bottom to the surface of the bottom, iron and manganese ores lie in this small area of ​​the bottom.

During the expedition, many technical problems arose and there were failures, but the precious experience of purposeful geological research gained over two seasons is also an important result of this extraordinary oceanological experiment.

Methods for studying the structure of the earth's crust in the ocean differ in some features. The bottom topography is studied not only with the help of echo sounders, but also side-scan locators and special echo sounders, which give a picture of the relief within a strip equal in width to the depth of the place. These new methods provide more accurate results and allow the relief to be depicted more accurately on maps.

On research vessels, gravimetric surveys are carried out using onboard gravimeters and magnetic anomalies are surveyed. These data make it possible to judge the structure of the earth's crust under the ocean. The main research method is seismic sounding. A small explosive charge is placed in the water column and an explosion is generated. A special receiving device records the arrival time of the reflected signals. Calculations determine the speed of propagation of longitudinal waves caused by an explosion in the earth's crust. Characteristic velocity values ​​make it possible to divide the lithosphere into several layers of different composition.

Currently, pneumatic devices or electric discharge are used as a source. In the first case, a small volume of air, compressed in a special device with a pressure of 250-300 atm, is released into the water (almost instantly). At a shallow depth, the air bubble expands sharply, thereby simulating an explosion. Frequent repetition of such explosions, caused by a device called an air gun, gives a continuous seismic sounding profile and, therefore, a fairly detailed profile of the structure of the earth's crust along the entire length of the tack.

A profilograph with an electric discharger (sparker) is used in a similar way. In this version of seismic equipment, the power of the discharge that excites oscillations is usually small, and a sparker is used to study the power and distribution of unconsolidated layers of bottom sediments.

To study the composition of bottom sediments and obtain their samples, various systems of soil tubes and bottom grabs are used. Soil tubes have, depending on the research task, different diameters, usually carry a heavy load for maximum penetration into the soil, sometimes have a piston inside and carry one or another contactor (core breaker) at the lower end. The tube is immersed in water and sediment at the bottom to one or another depth (but usually no more than 12-15 m), and the core thus extracted, usually called a core, is lifted onto the deck of the ship.

Bottom grabpers, which are grab-type devices, seem to cut out a small monolith of the surface layer of bottom soil, which is delivered to the deck of the ship. Self-floating dredge models have been developed. They eliminate the need for a cable and a deck winch and greatly simplify the method of obtaining a sample. In coastal areas of the ocean at shallow depths, vibrating piston soil tubes are used. With their help, it is possible to obtain columns up to 5 m long on sandy soils.

Obviously, all of the listed devices cannot be used to obtain samples (cores) of bottom rocks that are compacted and have a thickness of tens and hundreds of meters. These samples are obtained using conventional drilling rigs mounted on ships. For relatively shallow shelf depths (up to 150-200 m), special vessels are used that carry a drilling rig and are installed at the drilling point on several anchors. The vessel is held at a point by adjusting the tension of the chains going to each of the four anchors.

At depths of thousands of meters in the open ocean, anchoring a vessel is technically impossible. Therefore, a special dynamic positioning method has been developed.

The drilling ship goes to a given point, and the accuracy of determining the location is ensured by a special navigation device that receives signals from artificial Earth satellites. Then a rather complex device such as an acoustic beacon is installed at the bottom. The signals from this beacon are received by a system installed on the ship. After receiving the signal, special electronic devices determine the displacement of the vessel and instantly issue a command to the thrusters. The required group of propellers is turned on and the position of the vessel is restored. On the deck of a deep drilling vessel there is a drilling derrick with a rotary drilling unit, a large set of pipes and a special device for lifting and screwing together pipes.

The drilling ship Glomar Challenger (so far the only one) is carrying out work on an international deep-sea drilling project in the open ocean. More than 600 wells have already been drilled, with the greatest depth of wells being 1300 m. The materials from deep-sea drilling have yielded so many new and unexpected facts that there is an extraordinary interest in studying them. When studying the ocean floor, many different techniques and methods are used, and we can expect the emergence of new methods using new measurement principles in the near future.

In conclusion, brief mention should be made of one task in the overall ocean research program - the study of pollution. The sources of ocean pollution are varied. Discharge of industrial and domestic wastewater from coastal enterprises and cities. The composition of pollutants here is extremely diverse: from nuclear industry waste to modern synthetic detergents. Significant pollution is created by discharges from ocean-going ships, and sometimes by catastrophic oil spills during accidents of tankers and offshore oil wells. There is another way to pollute the ocean - through the atmosphere. Air currents carry over vast distances, for example, lead that enters the atmosphere with the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines. During gas exchange with the atmosphere, lead enters the water and is found, for example, in Antarctic waters.

Definitions of pollution are now organized into a special international observing system. In this case, systematic observations of the content of pollutants in water are assigned to the relevant vessels.

The most widespread pollution in the ocean is petroleum products. To control it, not only chemical methods of determination are used, but mostly optical methods. Special optical devices are installed on airplanes and helicopters, with the help of which the boundaries of the area covered by the oil film and even the thickness of the film are determined.

The nature of the World Ocean, this, figuratively speaking, huge ecological system of our planet, has not yet been sufficiently studied. Proof of this assessment is provided by recent discoveries in various fields of oceanology. Methods for studying the World Ocean are quite diverse. Undoubtedly, in the future, as new research methods are found and applied, science will be enriched with new discoveries.

The desire to comprehend the unknown has always inspired humanity in its eternal struggle with nature. And, perhaps, one of the strongest passions was the desire of a person to visit places where he had never set foot before.
Now, after the conquest of Antarctica, in the discovery and study of which the Russian people played a leading role, there are no vast “blank spots” left on land. Man crossed deserts, tropical forests and swamps from one end to another, and climbed to the tops of the greatest mountains. And already in many of the most difficult places to develop, pioneer settlements appeared. On the map of the globe, only a few “white spots” remained, not yet explored by people, not because they were particularly inaccessible, but mainly because they were not of any interest.
Man is no longer limited to exploring the surface of the globe, which he knows relatively well. Active space exploration has begun. The day is not far off when, following the path laid by Yu. Gagarin, researchers will rush to other planets. The next step is the implementation of projects to penetrate into the bowels of the earth and ocean.
We want to talk about man's conquest of the ocean depths. We will not mention here the dives of divers or scuba divers, although scuba divers, such as Jacques Cousteau and his comrades, did a lot in ocean research, however, only in its upper layer, 100-200 m. This, although impressive numbers, but they do not exceed the average depth of the “continental shelf” - the underwater continuation of the continents, followed by a sharp slope of the bottom to greater depths of the ocean. Recently, reports have appeared about reaching a depth of 250 m in scuba gear. Breathing during this dive was provided by a special gas mixture, the composition of which is kept secret.
Diving to depths of hundreds and thousands of meters was made possible thanks to the use of durable steel cylinders and spheres (balls) that can withstand enormous pressures.
The first researcher to construct a deep-sea chamber (hydrostat) and reach great depths in it was the American engineer Hans Hartmann. In 1911, in the Mediterranean Sea east of the Strait of Gibraltar, he sank to a depth of 458 m. The camera, designed for one person, was lowered from the ship on a steel cable. It had an automatic oxygen device, a device for absorbing carbon dioxide and electric lighting (12 V batteries placed inside the chamber). For observations, a porthole was made in the wall of the hydrostat. The special optical system designed by Hartmann made it possible to take photographs at a distance of up to 38 m, i.e. within the range of visibility by the human eye in clear water. There was no telephone in the hydrostat to communicate with the ship.
Hartmann's apparatus was quite primitive. First of all, the cylindrical shape of the camera itself was not entirely successful; The spherical shape is more advantageous, although less convenient for accommodating the crew. The fact that the dive did not end tragically is a matter of chance. Here is what Hartmann writes about his dive: “When a great depth was reached, the thought of danger, of the unreliability of the apparatus, immediately arose. This was indicated by an intermittent crackling sound inside the chamber, similar to pistol shots. The thought that there was no means to report to the top and no way to give an alarm signal was terrifying. At this time the pressure was 735 pounds per square inch (52 kg/cm2) of the surface of the apparatus. No less terrifying was the thought of the possibility of the lifting cable breaking or becoming entangled. The walls of the chamber were again covered with moisture, as happened in the preliminary experiments. It is unknown whether it was just sweating or whether water was driven through the pores of the apparatus under terrible pressure.”
The hydrostat of the Soviet engineer G.I. Danilenko, built by EPRON in 1923, turned out to be more successful. Using this device, EPRON found the English warship "Black Prince", which sank in Balaklava Bay in the Black Sea. According to rumors, it contained £2 million worth of gold coins, which were intended to pay the salaries of English soldiers who participated in the Crimean War against Russia. The Black Prince was found, but there was no gold on it. Later it turned out that the gold had been unloaded in Constantinople in advance.
With the help of the same hydrostat, in 1931, in the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, the gunboat “Rusalka” was found, which sank in 1893 during the passage from Tallinn to Helsinki.
Further improvement of the deep-sea apparatus was carried out by the Americans in 1925. The new chamber was a double-walled steel cylinder with an internal diameter of 75 cm. It could accommodate 2 people, one above the other. Under the camera there was ballast held by electromagnets, which, if necessary, could be reset, after which the camera could float. On the outside, the camera had three propellers for rotation (around a vertical axis) and tilting it in the water for easy inspection of the bottom. There was a device for capturing marine organisms. The apparatus was equipped with a telephone, instruments for determining depth (pressure gauges), a compass, electric heating pads, a chronometer, photographic equipment, thermometers for measuring water temperature and electric lighting. Although the camera was designed to descend to a depth of one kilometer, its main purpose was not to reach great depths, but to explore the ancient cities sunk in the Mediterranean Sea - Carthage and Posillipo and find sunken ships.
Subsequently, in order to raise sunken ships, new improvements were made to the design of deep-sea chambers: the devices were equipped with devices for drilling holes in the sides of ships, levers for laying lifting hooks, and new oxygen and air-purifying devices. The device was capable of small independent movements along the bottom. In such hydrostats, two people could stay under water for 4 hours.
Most of these improvements were used by Otis Barton and William Beebe when creating a new deep-sea vehicle, which they called a bathysphere (bati - deep, sphere - ball).
The idea of ​​​​creating a bathysphere dates back to 1927-1928, when V. Beebe, head of the Department of Tropical Research of the New York Zoological Society, began to develop designs for deep-sea vehicles to study life at great depths of the oceans and seas. At the same time, it was necessary to ensure the enormous strength of the apparatus, the reliability of devices for normal breathing and the safety of descent and ascent. It was necessary to use all the accumulated experience of deep-sea diving and take into account all the advantages and disadvantages of the spherical shape.
In 1929, D. Barton and W. Beebe built their bathysphere, a steel ball with a diameter of 144 cm, a wall thickness of 3.2 cm and a total weight of 2430 kg.
In 1930, they sank in the bathysphere to a depth of 240 m in the Atlantic Ocean off Bermuda, 7-8 miles south of Nonsatch Island. Test descents without a crew were previously carried out. Somewhat later, they reached a depth of 435 m in the same area. After the first dives, Barton donated the bathysphere to the New York Zoological Society. And in subsequent years, several more deep-sea dives were made on it with and without observers.
After a number of further improvements to the bathysphere, on August 15, 1934, Beebe and Barton made their famous dive to a depth of 923 m. The bathysphere was equipped with a telephone and a powerful searchlight in 1500. The cable on which the bathysphere was lowered into the sea was only 1067 m long, which limited the depth of the dive.
Despite careful preparation and meticulous checking of the readiness of the apparatus and the cable, the lowering was still associated with a certain risk. The fact is that during waves, additional dynamic stresses arise; in addition, loops may appear on the cable even in weak waves, which, when tightened, form so-called “pegs,” i.e., sharp bending of the cable with a break or breakage of individual strands. Quite a lot of concern was caused to the researchers by the uncertainty about the reliability of the connection of the quartz portholes with the steel chamber and the quality of the sealing of the entrance door of the bathysphere. Once, during a shallow-water test dive with people (this was August 6, 1934), instead of ten nuts, only four were screwed in, considering that for such a short and shallow dive this was quite enough. But already at a depth of 1.2 m, water began to quickly penetrate into the cabin, the level of which soon reached 25 cm. Beebe demanded an immediate rise by telephone and after that became more attentive and even picky when inspecting the apparatus before the next dive.
Another case threatened more serious troubles. One day, Beebe and Barton decided to replace the steel plate in the window slot with quartz and conduct a test descent without people to great depths. When the bathysphere was raised to the surface after immersion, a thin stream of water burst out of the bathysphere at the edge of the porthole under great pressure. Looking through the porthole, Beebe saw that almost the entire chamber was filled with water, and the surface of the water was covered with some strange ripples. “I began to unscrew the central bolt of the hatch,” writes V. Bib. “After the first turns, a strange high-pitched melodious sound was heard. Then a thin mist burst out. The sound repeated again and again, giving me time and opportunity to understand what I saw through the viewport of the bathysphere: the contents of the bathysphere were under terrible pressure. I cleared the deck in front of the hatch of people. The cinematographic camera was placed on the upper deck, and the second one nearby, on the side of the bathysphere. Carefully, little by little, splashed by the spray, two of us turned the copper bolts. I listened as gradually the high musical tone of the impatient, constrained element became lower and lower. Realizing what could happen, we deviated as far as possible from the direct line of “fire”.
Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the bolt was torn from our hands, and a mass of heavy metal swept across the deck like a shell from a cannon. The trajectory was almost straight, and the copper bolt crashed into a steel winch located about ten meters away, tearing out a half-inch piece from it. The bolt was followed by a powerful, dense stream of water, which quickly weakened and burst out like a waterfall from the opening of the bathysphere. The air mixed with water and gave the impression of hot steam, rather than compressed air passing through ice water. If I had been in the path of this fountain, I would certainly have been beheaded. Thus,” continues Beebe, “I became convinced of the possible results of water penetrating into the bathysphere at a depth of 2000 feet. In the icy blackness we would be crushed and turned into a shapeless mass by such lightweight substances as air and water.
In this case, the accident occurred due to a defective gasket in the window groove. And no matter what they say about the relative safety of descents to great depths, it was, especially at the dawn of the era of deep-sea diving, fraught with great risk. The pioneers of diving can rightfully be called daredevils and heroes.
William Beebe, being a zoologist, was naturally interested primarily in life at great depths. He made many interesting observations on the behavior of animals in their natural environment, and discovered several new species of deep-sea fish.
“During immersion,” the scientist notes, “a whole range of emotions is experienced; the first is associated with the first signs of deep-sea life, which occurs at a depth of 200 m and seems to close the door behind the upper world. The green color, the color of plants, has long since disappeared from our new cosmos, just as the plants themselves were left behind, far above.”
Here are stories about two dives made by William Beebe off Bermuda on August 11 and 15, 1934 at depths of 760 and 923 m.
11th August. Depth 250 m. The bathysphere passes through a swarm of small creatures in the form of worms with a body shape surprisingly reminiscent of a torpedo (bristle-jawed). These "torpedoes" were attacked from time to time by small fish. At a depth of 320 m, whole schools of mollusks appeared. Large fish sometimes swam among them, seemingly giants, up to 1 1/2 m long.
Having dived another 10 m below, Beebe saw significantly more representatives of marine fauna, both in the number of specimens and in the diversity of species, than he had expected. There were jellyfish, hatchet fish, eels, and a lot of shrimp that had an interesting defensive reflex: from time to time they “exploded,” that is, they threw out a cloud of luminous liquid to blind the enemy. With increasing depth, there was no noticeable impoverishment of life; on the contrary, every next tens of meters led to unexpected discoveries. At a depth of 360 m, four elongated jet fish appeared in the searchlight beam, very similar to arrows, the species of which Beebe could not determine. To replace them, a fish completely unknown to science swam out of the darkness, 60 cm long, with small eyes and a large mouth.
At a depth of 610 m, the scientist saw some huge body of unclear outline, which again flashed in the distance during the return ascent.
At 760 m (Bib did not descend lower this time), where the bathysphere lingered for half an hour, Beeb transmitted by telephone every 5 seconds to the deck of the Redi (the ship from which the bathysphere descended) about new impressions. Swimming past the porthole were copper-sided sabermouth fish, a skeleton fish, a flat fish similar to a moon fish, and 4 vertically moving fish with elongated and pointed jaws of an unknown genus and family. Finally, another “stranger” appeared, called by V. Beebe the “three-star anglerfish”, at the ends of each of the three long tentacles there was a light organ that emitted a rather strong pale yellow light.
While rising, Bib saw an amazingly beautiful fish, which he called the five-line constellation fish. It was a small, approximately 15 cm long, almost round fish. On its sides there were five lines of light - one axial “equatorial” and two curved lines above and below it, consisting of a number of small spots emitting pale yellow light. Around each spot there was a small purple ring glowing.
The dive on August 15 brought many interesting finds and vivid impressions. At a depth of 600 m, large fish, up to 2 m, were encountered, with luminous teeth, carrying their own signal lights at the ends of long stems, located one under the lower jaw and the other at the tail. The fish were decorated with lights, like an ocean steamer. And then a giant fish approached the bathysphere, which Beebe again failed to determine, at least 6 m in length. Apparently it was a small whale or whale shark.
In addition to many zoological discoveries and a mass of unique biological observations, these deep-sea dives of American researchers made a significant contribution to physical oceanography - the science of physical phenomena and processes occurring in the ocean. The most interesting observations were the lighting conditions at different depths. Here is the recording of V. Beebe, made by him during a dive to 760 liters.
Descent:
“The depth is 6 m. The rays of light are similar to the rays penetrating through the windows of a church. When I look up, I can still see the end of the Redi's stern.
79 m - the color quickly becomes bluish-green.
183 m - water - deep blue.
189 m - water - dark, rich blue.
290 m - the water is black-blue, muddy in color.
610 m - complete, pitch black darkness.
Climb:
527 m - it is definitely getting lighter. I see a little with the naked eye.
518 m - I can count my fingers by placing them on the window.
488 m - the color of the water is a cold, colorless light that slowly intensifies.
305 m - water color - gray-blue, the palest blue.
213 m - the color of the water is pleasant, juicy, steel, blue.
180 m - the water is a beautiful blue color, it seems that you can read freely, but I can’t see anything at all.”
15 years later, on August 16, 1949, D. Barton descended in the bathysphere near Los Angeles, to a depth of 1372 m. His ball weighed 3170 kg, had a diameter of 146 cm and hung on a cable 12 mm thick.
During this dive, Barton suffered a number of misfortunes: Barton’s jacket got into the air regeneration device and disrupted its operation, “something” lay on the searchlight and could not be turned, the middle window was obscured by “something incomprehensible.” During the dive, when the bathysphere had already reached a considerable depth, the lighting deteriorated. When Barton was asked at 1000 meters whether to lower it further, he replied: “Generally speaking, that’s enough. I feel a little seasick. Lower me another 350 m." Barton stayed under water for two hours and nineteen minutes, and the rise took 51 minutes.
Bathyspheres and hydrostats, although they had a number of disadvantages, brought many benefits to the study of the depths of the sea. Here in the Soviet Union, work was also carried out on the construction of devices for diving into the depths of the sea. In 1936-1937 At the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO), engineers Nelidov, Mikhailov and Künstler constructed a bathysphere for oceanographic and ichthyological work. It consisted of two steel hemispheres fastened with bolts. According to the project, the maximum depth for which the chamber was designed was 600 m. The water pressure as it immersed ensured self-sealing of the hemispheres at the point of their connection. In addition to the entrance hatch, the VNIRO bathysphere had two portholes located in the upper and lower hemispheres. At the bottom there were stabilizers that prevented rotation on the cable. Only one person could fit in the bathysphere (diameter 175 cm). In 1944, according to the design of engineer A. Z. Kaplanovsky, the GKS-6 hydrostat, also designed for one person, was built. Although the hydrostat was intended primarily for emergency rescue operations, it was also used by the Polar Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO) for scientific research. In less than one year (from September 1953 to July 1954), 82 dives were made there to depths of up to 70 m. The hydrostat made it possible to solve a number of problems of practical importance: the behavior of fish in their natural environment was studied, the operation of the trawl was observed and a number of others.
The experience of working with the GKS-6 hydrostat was used by Giprorybflot when designing (1959) a new hydrostat, designed for immersion up to 600 m and equipped with a searchlight, film and photographic equipment, a compass, a depth gauge and other instruments and devices.
In recent years, several more hydrostats and bathyspheres have been manufactured in a number of countries. Thus, in Japan in 1951, the Kuro-shio hydrostat was built. In terms of technical equipment, it surpasses other similar devices. The Kuro-shio hydrostat is equipped with several electric motors. One of them drives the propeller, the other a gyrocompass, the third a fan for cleaning the air in the cabin, and the fourth a device for taking soil samples. There are two spotlights on the hydrostat, one is mounted on top in such a way that it can rotate, changing the direction of the light beam; the second, located below, allows you to view the bottom under the device. The camera is equipped with a telephone, photo and film equipment, a depth gauge, and an inclinometer. “Kuro-shio” is designed for two people, but it can accommodate 4. Its weight is 3380 kg, diameter 148 cm, height 158 ​​cm, side wall thickness 14 mm. The main disadvantage of the Kuro-shio hydrostat is its shallow immersion depth, only 200 m.
In Italy, engineer Galeazzi designed a new hydrostat, which went into operation in 1957. A special feature of its design is the end load, which prevents the device from crashing into the ground when it reaches the bottom. In the event of an accident, this load can easily be separated and the hydrostat floats up. Two rows of portholes are angled to each other so that almost the entire space around is visible. The electrical telephone cable is mounted in a support cable that serves to suspend the device. The Galeazzi hydrostat is designed for one person.
Of the hydrostats built recently, the hydrostat designed in France and transferred to the research vessel Calypso deserves attention. It is used when scuba divers are working simultaneously, which significantly increases work efficiency. After all, the hydrostat is an almost uncontrollable projectile, and the presence of a freely moving person outside the hydrostat to some extent compensates for this disadvantage.
The complete dependence of the bathysphere and hydrostat on the ship from which they are diving, the eternal threat of sinking the apparatus along with people, and the need to lower the cable with them forced researchers to look for fundamentally new solutions to the issue of deep-sea diving. This problem was solved by the Swiss scientist Auguste Picard.
Piccard, while still a young man, read a report about the deep-sea exploration of Karl Hoon's expedition carried out from the Valdivia. Glowing fish, new species of animals discovered by this expedition, and other discoveries aroused his interest in studying the sea. After graduating from the technical faculty of the Higher School in Zurich, Piccard became the head of the Academic Union of Aeronautics. Subsidized by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, he built the FNRS-1 stratospheric balloon, on which he reached a record altitude of 17,000 m in 1931. A few years later, he came up with a project to create a deep-sea projectile - a bathyscaphe, not connected to the surface of the sea and a ship, capable of maneuvering, i.e., fundamentally different from the Beebe-Barton bathysphere.
If a bathysphere can be compared with a balloon, that is, with a tethered balloon, then an airship should be considered an analogue of a bathyscaphe.
The principle of the bathyscaphe is simple. A balloon rises because it is lighter than the air it displaces. To dive under water, it is necessary to create a device that, with ballast, would be heavier than water and therefore would sink, and without ballast would be lighter than water and float. Picard achieved this by taking gasoline into large tanks (cisterns), the specific gravity of which is 25-30% less than the specific gravity of water and therefore gives the apparatus positive buoyancy (for ascent). The construction of the bathyscaphe was interrupted by the war, and it was resumed only in 1945.
In September 1948, the bathyscaphe, built according to Picard's design, was ready. It was named FNRS-2 in honor of the Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifigue), which subsidized the construction of the device.
The bathyscaphe consisted of a steel spherical cabin (bathysphere) with a diameter of 218 cm, with a wall thickness of 9 cm and a body containing 6 thin-walled steel tanks filled with gasoline.
To move the bathyscaphe in the water horizontally, two motors were installed on both sides of the cabin, driving the propellers. A chain (hydrrop) weighing 140 kg suspended at the bottom of the chamber stopped the apparatus when it touched the ground and held it 1 m from the bottom. The bathyscaphe could travel under water about 10 nautical miles (18.5 km) at a speed of 1 knot (1.85 km/h).
Iron ingots held by electromagnets served as ballast. The cabin of the bathyscaphe is filled to the limit with control instruments and observation devices. There is a movie camera for automatic filming under water, a control panel for spotlights, electromagnets and mechanical claws, with which the crew could grab objects located near the submersible, oxygen and air purification devices that ensure that 2 people stay in the cabin for 24 hours, and much other equipment , including Geiger counters for recording cosmic and radioactive radiation.
Scientists feared that the bathyscaphe would be attacked by deep-sea giant squids, which would even engage in combat with whales. To combat them, special guns were designed. The device was armed with 7 such cannons, which were loaded with harpoons about a meter long and fired using a pneumatic “charge”. The impact force of these guns increased with depth as pressure increased. At the surface, guns could not be used due to the low impact force, but already at a depth of about a kilometer, a harpoon could pierce an oak board 7.5 cm thick at a distance of 5 m.
To enhance the striking effect, an electric current was supplied to the end of the harpoon through the harpoon cable, and strychnine was placed into the harpoon tip.
Operation was complicated by the fact that the crew of the bathyscaphe, after surfacing, could not independently exit the sealed cabin. To do this, the device was lifted aboard the vessel providing the dive, and the cabin hatch was opened there. That is why it was extremely important to detect and raise the submersible in a timely manner, otherwise the people locked in it would suffocate from lack of air. To facilitate the search for it after surfacing, there was a radar mast - a reflector on the body of the device, and on the El Monier support vessels and frigates, in addition to radars, ultrasonic locators were installed, allowing one to monitor the position of the bathyscaphe during scuba diving.
On October 1, 1948, the bathyscaphe FNRS-2 was delivered for practical tests on the Belgian steamer Scaldis to Dakar (west coast of Africa), where the steamer El Monier was located with a group of French scuba divers (Cousteau, Dumas, Tailleux), on a mission which included servicing the bathyscaphe in preparation for the dive and when boarding the Skaldis. The tests were carried out in the bay near the island of Boavista in the Cape Verde archipelago.
The start was not entirely successful; the launch of the bathyscaphe into the water lasted five days. But, finally, all obstacles were overcome, and on November 26, 1948, in complete calm, a test dive took place. The bathyscaphe stayed under water for 16 minutes. Picard and Mrno took part in the first dive.
A few days later, a second, already deep-sea, dive was carried out near the island of Santiago, without passengers. The depth of the ocean at the dive site reached 1780 m. The dive went well, except that the aluminum radar reflector disappeared, and several thin sheets of the hull shell were swollen and wrinkled. The device stayed under water for half an hour and reached a depth of 1400 m.
The lifting of the bathyscaphe aboard the ship was not entirely successful. There was a lot of excitement, the apparatus was shaking violently, and the scuba divers could not connect the hoses to pump out gasoline. I had to purge the gasoline tanks with compressed carbon dioxide. Clouds of gasoline vapor covered both the bathyscaphe and the Skaldis and, in the end, corroded the paint of the device. In addition, due to the excitement during the ascent, the hull of the bathyscaphe was fairly dented, and one of the motors was torn off along with the propeller.
Tests have shown that the bathyscaphe is quite suitable for deep-sea diving, but is completely unsuitable for lifting it from the water onto board a ship or for long-term towing. It turned out to be rolly and unstable on the wave, and its hull was very fragile. Shortcomings were discovered in the system for securing and discharging ballast. It became necessary to ensure that the crew could exit the chamber onto the deck of the bathyscaphe hull immediately after surfacing.
For reconstruction, the bathyscaphe was sent back to Toulon. In 1952, Auguste Picard received an invitation from Trieste to take part as the leading physicist and engineer in the construction of a new Italian submarine. Construction of the vessel proceeded quickly (III-1952 - VII-1953), and in the summer of 1953 the new bathyscaphe, named after the city where it was built, “Trieste,” was ready. From Trieste he was taken to the Castellamare shipyard, near Naples, in an area convenient for deep-sea diving, since here the great depths come close to the shore.
On August 1, 1953, the Trieste was launched. During 1953, the new bathyscaphe made 7 dives, of which 4 were shallow and 3 deep:
to a depth of 1080 m - 26.VI.II south of the island of Capri,
3150 m - 30.IX south of Ponza Island,
650 m - 2.X south of Ishiya Island.
All these dives were of a testing nature. The bathyscaphe was piloted by Auguste Piccard and his son Jacques. A few years later, in this submersible, man for the first time reached the maximum depth of the ocean (about 11 km) in one of the deepest trenches - the Mariana Trench. That's why we want to talk about Trieste in more detail.
Simultaneously with the Trieste, the FNRS-3 bathyscaphe was built. Structurally, they are siblings, and currently represent the most advanced deep-sea projectiles. Let us give a schematic description of them in order to show, at least in the most general terms, the difficulties that the creators of these bathyscaphes had to overcome.
The design is based on Picard’s concept design, which he had previously implemented in the form of the FNRS-2 bathyscaphe. The bathysphere (a sealed spherical chamber for the crew) was used from the FNRS-2 bathyscaphe.
Two people can fit comfortably inside the submersible. One of them pilots the submersible, and his attention is entirely focused on control. The task of the second is to make observations, however, he also participates in management; conducts visual observations, thereby warning of approaching the bottom or other obstacles. He is also in charge of photographic equipment, lighting devices, a hydroacoustic locator, a dive depth recorder, and an echo sounder.
The buoyancy chamber is welded from thin steel sheets and consists of 6 insulated compartments. The total chamber capacity is about 110,000 liters. It is filled with 74 tons of light gasoline with a density of 0.70, which provides over 30 tons of buoyancy. There are holes at the bottom of the chamber. When immersed, gasoline is compressed under high pressure, but since water freely penetrates through these holes, compensating for this compression, the chamber body does not deform. The presence of holes does not lead to a noticeable leak of gasoline, since it (as a lighter substance) fills the upper part of the chamber. Naturally, the water that has passed into the body will only be from the bottom. When rising, gasoline will expand, and through the holes located in the lower part of the chamber, the water that penetrated during immersion will first be forced out.
To give stability to the vessel, side keels are installed along the entire body of the chamber. A deck is placed on top of the buoyancy chamber, reinforcing the rigidity of the structure and carrying a wheelhouse in the central part, fencing the entrance to the vertical shaft-sluice connecting the deck with the bathysphere.
This vertical shaft is a site of great design and operational difficulties. Its necessity is due to the fact that the mine is the only way for the crew to get into and out of the bathysphere. It is impossible in this case to place the bathysphere at deck level and thereby get rid of the vertical shaft. Firstly, because observers would not be able to look down and see the bottom, that is, they would be deprived of the most important line of sight, and secondly, moving the heaviest part of the structure would lead to a loss of stability of the vessel. Therefore the mine is inevitable.
This gives rise to a number of complications. Making the shaft airtight for the maximum pressures for which the bathyscaphe is designed is extremely unprofitable, since the weight of the structure will increase by 2-3 times. Consequently, the shaft must be filled with water when immersed. But in order for the crew to exit the chamber when ascending to the surface, the shaft must be freed from water. Here you need a supply of compressed air and a device that would allow you to blow out the mine at the right time. In the FNRS-2 bathyscaphe, the crew could not leave the bathysphere without outside help. This deficiency has been eliminated in FNRS-3. However, the design of the bathyscaphe, as we see, has not been simplified at all. Power equipment and a number of auxiliary devices are also located on the deck. It is noteworthy that the propeller (propellers) of the bathyscaphe is located in the bow close to the center of the latter. Of course, this arrangement is not the best from the point of view of the efficiency of the ship's propellers. It is most likely dictated by the desire to reduce the distance from the energy source to the electric motor and from the motor to the propellers.
Safety during the dive is ensured by a guiderope, a hydroacoustic locator (echo sounder), powerful spotlights, and a special device that determines the dive speed and makes it possible to regulate this speed.
The safety of the submersible's ascent is very carefully thought out. There are a number of systems independent from each other, each of which allows the bathyscaphe to rise from the depths: 1) dropping a hydraulic drop weighing 150 kg; 2) dropping batteries weighing about 600 kg; 3) dropping consumable ballast (lead shot), the reserve of which at the beginning of the dive is about 8 tons; 4) dumping 2 tons of emergency ballast; 5) purging of the vertical shaft, which creates additional buoyancy of the bathyscaphe.
In addition, if for one reason or another none of the crew members is able to activate the devices that control the ascent, a special clock mechanism will turn off the electromagnets holding the ballast at the appointed time, and the bathyscaphe will float to the surface.
All of the above systems are controlled electrically. But there is a possibility of damage to the power supply of the systems or breakage of wires. In this case, the emergency ballast is reset automatically.
To prevent the possibility of accidental collisions with the bottom and other obstacles, there is a heavy hydrrop, the weight of which is designed so that the submersion of the bathyscaphe will stop and it will stop at a distance of 1 to 3 m from the bottom. The approach to the bottom can be seen visually by an observer. To achieve this, the porthole is positioned appropriately and the spotlights face down. Before the guiderope touches the ground, and before the observer sees the bottom, the echo sounder will report the distance to the bottom. Another acoustic device, similar to an echo sounder, measures the distance to the surface; this same measurement is duplicated by another device - a depth gauge.
In addition to echo sounders that measure vertical distances, the bathyscaphe is equipped with another acoustic sonar device, which allows one to measure the distance and determine the direction to any object that appears in front of the bathyscaphe moving under water.
The rate of descent or ascent is determined by a vertical speedometer. Isolating an external electrical circuit and sealing lighting and other electrical outdoor devices is a technically complex problem. 5 spotlights are installed to illuminate the depths. The bow and stern are designed mainly to ensure safety from collision when the bathyscaphe is diving. For scientific observations and for photography and filming, three (2,000-watt) spotlights installed near the porthole are used. In addition to conventional spotlights, an electric flash lamp is installed, the operation of which is synchronized with the camera shutter. The internal lighting of the bathysphere is powered by two independent circuits. The horizontal movement of the bathyscaphe is carried out by two reversible propellers, the rotation of which is carried out by electric motors. Naturally, the underwater “airship” does not develop high speed. It is capable of moving horizontally at a speed of only about 1 knot (1.5-2 km/h).
Preparation of the bathyscaphe for diving begins in a port located as close as possible to the diving site. Before launching, the operation of all control mechanisms is checked.
The device is attached to the crane boom with special rigging and lowered into the water. Then, after launching, they begin to fill the 6 compartments of the buoyancy chamber with gasoline. They must be filled simultaneously to avoid overloading the walls of the compartments. As long as the sluice shaft is not filled with water, the bathyscaphe remains buoyant.
For diving, choose a day with calm weather; this, of course, greatly limits the work. The delicate body of the buoyancy chamber should not be subjected to impacts from even small waves.
The bathyscaphe, fully prepared for work, is towed to the dive site. Here he is examined again by scuba divers. The crew takes their places. Radio communication is established with the accompanying ship, which is valid until the vehicle dives. The dive begins by filling the sluice shaft with water. Having received about four tons of water, the submersible begins to submerge. As you move downward, the rate of descent decreases, as the density of the water below increases due to a decrease in temperature and an increase in salinity. An increase in the density of sea water due to increasing pressure does not affect the sinking speed of the bathyscaphe, since the density of gasoline also increases by almost exactly the same amount. The effect of a temperature drop decreases over time due to the gradual cooling of gasoline in the buoyancy chamber and an increase in its density.
An increase in salinity with depth, as well as a decrease in temperature (cooling of gasoline in the buoyancy chamber occurs much more slowly than the drop in water temperature) leads to the fact that the speed of the submersion gradually decreases, and, finally, the dive stops completely. To continue the descent, hydronauts must release some of the gasoline through a special valve. As you approach the bottom, the dive speed is reduced. This is achieved by dumping small amounts of ballast.
The heavy guiderop hits the bottom first. Naturally, the buoyancy of the bathyscaphe increases, and the dive stops.
During the dive, observations are made through the porthole. It is clear that the hydronauts, and there are only two of them, are very busy with work. It is necessary to control the descent, maintain communication with the accompanying ship through a hydroacoustic device, monitor the approach of the bottom, monitor the operation of air purification equipment, conduct observations, and take photographs. We must not forget that the nervous system of hydronauts is very tense: after all, even the most experienced explorer of the depths has only a few dives under his belt, and the knowledge that you are in a two-meter iron case at a depth where the pressure is equal to hundreds of kilograms for every square centimeter, does not reduce tension at all.
Having reached the bottom, deep explorers have the opportunity to conduct a short swim along it, turning on the electric motors that drive the propellers of the bathyscaphe.
After finishing work, the ballast is reset. The ascent begins. Of course, the observations do not stop. Finally, the submersible reached the surface. But the hydronauts do not yet have the opportunity to leave the bathysphere - the shaft leading to the deck is filled with water. The shaft is blown out with compressed air. Only after this can you begin to open the entrance hatch cover and establish communications with the accompanying ship. If visual communication is impossible due to range, turn on the radio transmitter. On the surface, the submersible is quite helpless. Even if the reserve of electricity is not used up during a dive, then even in this case it will be able to travel no more than 10-15 km at a speed of 2 km/hour. In other words, until the supply ship takes the bathyscaphe in tow, it is a toy of sea currents and waves.
Initially, Trieste was equipped very modestly. It did not have an external camera or a number of control and navigation devices. There was little scientific equipment either. It was only in 1955 that a small echo sounder and underwater spotlights were installed on it.
In 1954, work on Trieste began only in the fall. For a long time, the weather did not allow the submersible to be taken out to the open sea to reach great depths. Therefore, in 1954, only 8 shallow dives were made in the Gulf of Naples to depths of no more than 150 meters. Many researchers and, in particular, Swedish scientists took part in the descents - zoologist P. Tarden, biologist M. Kobr and A. Pollini - an Italian geologist from the University of Milan, who took several soil samples from the bottom. The device in these dives was piloted by the son of Auguste Piccard, Jacques Piccard.
The dives were carried out without the aid of an echo sounder. This made it difficult to prepare in a timely manner for “landing” on the bottom of the sea. The hydronauts could not slow down the descent of the bathyscaphe in a timely manner, gradually etching shot from the ballast tanks in order to easily touch the bottom with the hydraulic chain. As a result, the bathysphere sank twice into the viscous silt of the seabed. In addition to a sharp deterioration in visibility from the windows, this threatened more serious troubles: the bathyscaphe could get stuck at the bottom, unable to dump ballast. The echo sounder installed later on the Trieste made it possible to reduce the diving speed in advance and thereby provide the opportunity, using a guiderop, to install the device in a suspended state several meters from the bottom.
In 1955, no dives were made due to financial complications, and in 1956, 7 dives were made with J. Picard as a pilot: 3 shallow and 4 deep (620, 1100 and 3700 m). A. Pollini took part in the latter as a scientific observer.
All deep-sea dives were carried out without biologists, so observations of living organisms made by non-specialists were not as accurate and complete as they were when V. Beebe was lowered. But life at the depths in the area of ​​these dives turned out to be incomparably poorer than in Bermuda, where Beebe dived. At times the sea seemed almost completely lifeless. The Mediterranean Sea east of Spain has 8 times less organic productivity than the Atlantic Ocean west of the Iberian Peninsula.
However, during dives in 1956 to depths of 1100, 2000 and 3700 m, a significant density of life was recorded at some horizons. Between depths of 500 and 900 m, the bathyscaphe passed through zones in which hundreds of tunicates (salps) could be seen simultaneously through the window. They are almost completely transparent and can only be seen when the spotlight is turned off due to the internal flickering of white fluorescent light. In addition to salps, other organisms were also found at medium depths: jellyfish, siphonophores, pteropods, and once a small colorless shrimp 3 cm long was also encountered.
During all deep-sea descents, with the exception of the upper layers of the sea, no fish were seen. Only twice did brilliant, luminescent moving traces appear in the observer’s field of vision, which presumably can be attributed to deep-seated fish.
During relatively shallow subsidences, Picard observed a large number of scattered particles, some of them are in suspension (living zooplankton), and some fall as sediment to the bottom (the corpses of dead microscopic animals - organic detritus). At shallow depths, where scattered sunlight still penetrates, these particles are invisible. But at great depths in complete darkness, in the rays of a spotlight, they become distinguishable, like dust in a room visible in a ray of sun.
Picard's observations of the seabed from the bathyscaphe Trieste provided oceanographers with valuable information. During dives, when the ocean depth did not exceed 100 m, he often saw large and small holes and hills on the bottom, reminiscent of wormholes. These are refuges for fish, crabs and other bottom-dwelling creatures, collectively called benthos. Sometimes they could be seen entering and leaving these holes, being disturbed by the ballast shot being released. Such burrows and mounds were not observed at great depths.
Usually they dived onto a soft and flat bottom, but near the island of Capri they often had to choose a “landing” place, since they encountered a hard, sometimes rocky bottom, where strong currents were noticeable. Several times after the dive, the bathyscaphe was carried away by the flow along the bottom at a speed of approximately 1 knot. To stop, it was necessary to release a certain amount of gasoline in order to press the bathyscaphe more firmly to the bottom.
The participation of geologist A. Pollini determined the geological focus of the Trieste study. Usually the water column was passed through quickly, but observations at the bottom took hours. The bathyscaphe was equipped with a special device for taking small soil samples, and Pollini collected them wherever possible. It was noticed that viscous silt in some areas has great mobility: as soon as several tens of kilograms of ballast shot were dropped from the bathyscaphe, an avalanche-like cloud of silt rose from the bottom quite quickly to a height of several meters and enveloped the bathyscaphe.
There were no special current meters installed on the Trieste, but bottom currents can be measured quite accurately. In this case, the bathyscaphe itself is like a “float” floating with the flow. The observer can only mark a point on the bottom and determine his movement relative to it. If the bathyscaphe stands on a hydraulic drop at the bottom, and suspended particles float past it, then they are carried away by the current. But during all dives to a depth of more than 1000 m, no currents were detected: the water seemed completely motionless. However, from these observations of Picard it cannot be concluded that in all areas of the Mediterranean Sea there are no currents at great depths. Weak currents with a speed of 5-6 cm per second are found at great depths in this sea. Most often this occurs in deep straits. As we will see later, on the FNRS-3 bathyscaphe we observed a significant current at a depth of 2000 m near Toulon.
Picard also made observations of the transparency of sea water. As you know, the Mediterranean Sea is a body of water with exceptionally clear and clean water. One of the main reasons for this is the poverty of its organic life. The unusual purity and transparency of the waters gives the unique deep blue color characteristic of the Mediterranean Sea.
The visibility of objects under water without artificial lighting is determined by scattered sunlight penetrating to the depths. Piccard observed through the porthole the decrease in visibility of one of the ballast tanks, painted white: it completely merged with the black background only at a depth of about 600 m. The transparency of the bottom waters is evidenced by the fact that in the light of the searchlight the bottom was visible at a distance of about 15 m.
For Picard, a technician by training, observing the seabed and deep-sea fauna was not the main task. His thoughts were directed towards technical problems. He set himself the goal of constructing a reliable deep-sea vehicle that would allow him to reach the maximum depths of the World Ocean. In this regard, his main focus is on solving issues of material overload and everything that can ensure diving safety.
Picard calculated that his bathyscaphe would withstand external pressure of up to 1,700 atmospheres. Thus, even at a depth of 11,000 m, his bathyscaphe will have a sufficient margin of safety. Continuing to improve control technology, for a number of years he prepared the bathyscaphe to reach extreme depths (as is known, the maximum depth of the ocean is slightly more than 11,000 m).
As a mathematician, O. Picard excluded chance and was confident of success. When one day, in connection with a dive to 3150 m, he was asked if he had any fears that his attempt would fail, he replied:
“Math is never wrong. My journey to a depth of 3150 meters was safe. What could happen to us? Earthquakes, meteorites, storms... Nothing can penetrate our abode of eternal silence. Sea monsters? I don't believe in them. But even if they existed and attacked us, they would not have been able to do anything except break their teeth on the steel shell of our boat. And if a huge octopus wanted to hold us with its tentacles at the bottom of the sea, we would create a lifting force of ten tons - we are not afraid of any tentacles. My underwater journey was therefore safe. For me, after a dive, it is much more dangerous to climb from a small boat onto the ship along the storm ladder in strong seas.”
But another question followed: “If the bathyscaphe falls under a rock ledge, what will you do?” Picard shrugged: “Yes, then... then you’ll have to stay below if you don’t manage to free yourself in time by reversing the propeller.”
Of course, the scientist had a pretty clear idea of ​​the degree of “safety” of diving in a submersible. As the descents of the French FNRS-3 apparatus showed, the danger of falling under the ledge of an underwater rock turned out to be not so illusory. And besides this, other unforeseen dangers and accidents await the brave pioneers of deep-sea diving at the bottom of the sea, such as powerful landslides and avalanches of soft silt rolling down the steep slopes of underwater canyons and much more unknown.
Trieste also had to encounter some of these surprises.
As already mentioned, the reworking of the FNRS-2 bathyscaphe began at the beginning of 1949. It was decided to leave the bathyscaphe sphere intact, and completely replace the shell of the buoyancy hull, which failed the test in the fall of 1948 near Dakar. The conversion work proceeded very slowly: it was only in October 1950 that an agreement was concluded between France and Belgium to construct a new bathyscaphe body around the old FNRS-2 sphere. During 1951, Professor Picard provided the necessary consultations during the construction of FNRS-3, but since 1952 he has focused his main attention on Trieste.
The main work on the construction of FNRS-5, as well as Trieste, was carried out in 1952. Construction of both ships was completed almost simultaneously - FNRS-3 - in May, Trieste - in July 1953.
On August 6, 1953, on the bathyscaphe FNRS-3, Lieutenant-Commander Uau and Lieutenant-Engineer Wilm, officers of the French Navy, descended to a depth of 750 m.
On August 12, 1953, Uo and William sank near Cape Kepet to a depth of 1550 m, and on August 14 - to a depth of 2100 m. During the last dive, the echo sounder failed, and without it, the researchers did not dare to sink to the bottom in the immediate vicinity of the rocky cape.
After test dives, it was decided to move to Dakar to make a record dive there to 4000-4500 m. This descent was scheduled for December - January - the best time for the dominance of stable weak trade winds. But, having learned that on September 30, Professor Picard sank on the Trieste to a depth of 3150 m, driven by the sensational press, Uo and Wilm were forced to try to immediately break this record in the Mediterranean Sea. Their attempt to set a record on November 30 failed due to the failure of the water level indicator, which replaced gasoline as the bathyscaphe sank.
Subsequently, while diving in the Mediterranean Sea, Uo, together with the famous scuba diver Cousteau, reached the bottom on December 11, 1953 at a depth of 1200 m in a canyon near Cape Kepet, near Toulon. During their descent, they observed quite abundant life: very dense plankton, shrimp, jellyfish at medium depths (200-750 m). Below 750 m, life became poorer, and at the very bottom, deeper than 1000 m, it became more abundant again. Here Cousteau observed squid, and at the very bottom three large sharks, about two meters long, with bulging globe-shaped eyes.
In January 1954, FNRS-3 was delivered to Dakar, and already on January 21, Uo and Wilm made a test dive to a depth of 750 m to check the equipment before the record dive. As they descended, they observed abundant life. The plankton was perhaps less dense than near Toulon, but the organisms included in it were larger. Uo and Wilm saw shrimp, jellyfish, and a variety of fish. They, not being specialists, could not identify many of them. Near the bottom they encountered sharks 1.5-2 m long, and at the bottom a giant crab with a shell 40 cm in diameter. During this dive, the bathyscaphe was carried down the slope of the bottom by a strong undercurrent at a speed of approximately 1-2 knots.
At the end of January 1954, a control descent without people was made to a depth of 4100 m, and on February 14, a record dive of the bathyscaphe to the bottom at a depth of 4050 m took place. Uo and Wilm were in the chamber. The descent took place 100 km from the coast (from Dakar) and ended quite successfully. It lasted 5 1/2 hours, including quite a long stay at the bottom of the sea.
The rate of descent and ascent was too great to make detailed observations of everything that was happening outside the bathyscaphe. The unusual situation forced us to pay closer attention to all the instruments. Only at the bottom did it become possible to make some incidental observations. Uo assures that the bottom soil was thin and white sand. He turned on the motors and made the submersible move along the fairly flat seabed. Sometimes a solitary flower appeared on the sand - a sea anemone, surprisingly similar to a tulip. And finally, just before the ascent, the researchers were lucky enough to see a deep-sea shark with a very large head and huge eyes. She did not react in any way to the bright light of the submersible's searchlights. A few minutes after the meeting with the shark, the electromagnets automatically turned off, which dropped the electric batteries to the bottom. This lightened the bathyscaphe by 120 kg and caused it to rise rapidly.
All FNRS-3 dives carried out so far were of a test nature and were aimed at checking the reliability of the device, the coherence of the work of its individual parts and the acquisition of experience by the crew. But with the record-breaking dive, the era of testing was over. “From today on, the submersible belongs to science,” Uo said after this descent. And indeed, from then on, a scientist, most often a biologist, almost always took part in the descents along with the pilot.
Already in April 1954, Uo made two descents to the bottom near Dakar together with biologist Théodore Monod, and on May 16 of the same year, FNRS-3 returned back to Toulon, where from July to September it made 10 dives. 5 of them were to the bottom, to a depth of 2100-2300 m. During one of these descents, Uo landed on the edge of a vertical cliff. Uo was afraid that the cliff might be the edge of a narrow crack in which the bathyscaphe might be wedged. Not without timidity, he set the propeller in motion, approached the edge of the cliff and continued his descent along the completely vertical wall. The height of the wall reached 20 m.
In subsequent years, FNRS-3 continued regular deep-sea dives. Over 4 years, 59 dives were made on it, 26 of which were made with biologists. In 1955, the bathyscaphe was exhibited at an exhibition in Paris, and in 1956 it again explored the depths of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal.
In 1958, FNRS-3 was leased by Japan for research in the North Pacific Ocean. In August - September 1958, the bathyscaphe made 9 dives to the east of the Japanese Islands, with the deepest being up to 3000 m. At this depth, by the movement of disturbed silt and plankton relative to the bottom, scientists established the presence of a bottom current. The flow speed was about 2 cm per second.
Elsewhere, at a depth of 2800 m, the effects of volcanic activity were studied. A large number of large rock fragments (up to 1.5 m) with a fresh fracture surface were discovered here. Sometimes traces of movement of these fragments were noted on the ground. And at this depth a bottom current was noticed.
At a depth of about 500 m, the researchers discovered a layer of water temperature jump. At this depth, the temperature drops sharply from 15 to 4-5°. The jump layer separates the upper warm water of Kuro Sivo from the lower cold water of Oya Sivo. In the layer there was an accumulation of deep-sea jellyfish and crustaceans, but there were no fish. In terms of the abundance of life at great depths, the Pacific Ocean even surpasses the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
Research on FNRS-3 has brought a lot of new science. They essentially opened up the world of the deep to biologists, showed the natural seabed to geologists, and communicated many valuable observations to oceanographers.
Uo gave a clear and precise description of a hitherto unknown phenomenon - underwater avalanches: “A frequent and, unfortunately, dangerous phenomenon that worries divers in canyons: underwater avalanches. Contact of the bathyscaphe or its hydraulic chain with the canyon wall, or even the release of a few pounds of ballast, separates small clumps of silt. Under the influence of their own gravity, they begin to roll down the slope. At the same time, other lumps separate and, growing, form an avalanche. A huge dark cloud appears above the bottom of the sea. We then find ourselves immersed in such darkness that our searchlights are powerless to pierce it, and we can only wait until the swirling clouds thin out. If the sea current is weak, this will take 15 minutes or even half an hour.
One avalanche was so strong that the cloud did not clear after an hour. We decided to leave the bottom and get out of the disturbed area. It was necessary to climb approximately 1,000 feet (300 m) to reach clear water."
Waugh believes that one of the discoveries of FNRS-3 is the detection of very strong currents at great depths. True, no instrumental measurements of the speed of these currents were made, since it was not yet possible to install sufficiently reliable current meters on the bathyscaphe. But observations of floating suspended particles past the standing bathyscaphe made it possible to approximately determine the strength of the current, and using a compass, its direction. The current speed in some places reached 1-2 knots (2-3 1/2 km per hour).
Of particular value are observations of living organisms in their natural environment. A number of such observations are considered in science as discoveries. Thus, it was believed that the highly elongated pelvic and caudal fins of the deep-sea benthosaurus fish served as organs of touch. After studies carried out from the bathyscaphe, it became clear that these “fins” are used by fish as “legs”. Uo has never seen them in a position other than the one shown in the picture.
Interesting observations were made on the behavior of shrimp. They became very excited under the influence of the spotlights and gathered in such a dense mass that sometimes it was necessary to stop work and return to the surface due to the complete impossibility of making any observations. Near the bottom, they dive down at high speed, touch the bottom, leaving imprints on it, and return up again. Large shrimps of amazingly pure pink color behave more calmly.
The bathyscaphe made it possible to ascertain the presence of large animals at the bottom of the deep sea (sharks at a depth of 4050 m near Dakar). During the descent, new species of fish were discovered, hitherto unknown to science. Uo's observations of the behavior of inhabitants of deep seas led him to guess that many deep-sea animals are most likely blind (benthosaurus, some stingrays, possibly deep-sea sharks). But at the same time, they have a kind of locator installations, that is, they have a special apparatus like the sensitive organ of a bat, which allows them to skillfully avoid obstacles in their blind swimming. Uo made this conclusion by noticing that the fish do not feel the powerful light of the searchlights at all, but at the same time freely bypass everything, even the slightest obstacles on the bottom of the sea.
Bathyscaphe "Trieste" was acquired by the USA in 1959. At the Krupp factories, a new sealed bathysphere chamber was manufactured for it, designed to reach extreme ocean depths. On it, November 15, 1959 in the Mariana Trench, near the island. Guam, a deep-sea dive was made to a depth of 5,670 m (18,600 ft). The ship contained: the son of Auguste Picard, Jacques Picard, and the American A. Regnitouer. A photograph of the bottom was obtained.
On January 9, 1960, in the same area, Trieste sank to a depth of 7,320 m (24,000 ft), and on January 23, J. Picard and his assistant, the American Dan Walsh, reached the bottom in the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. The Trieste instruments recorded a depth of 6,300 fathoms (11,520 m). However, after introducing corrections, the true depth of the dive turned out to be 10,919 m.
The lowering of the bathyscaphe to its maximum depth was preceded by careful preparation: the equipment and the strength of every square centimeter of its hull were checked. 3 days before the descent, a thorough sounding of the Mariana Trench was carried out from the auxiliary vessel Lewis. To achieve more accurate measurement results, we had to resort to explosions on the ocean floor. In total, more than 300 explosions of trinitrotoluene charges were made.
The point planned for the bathyscaphe's dive was 200 nautical miles southwest of the island of Guam. The dive site was recorded by placing a floating radio transmitter, which periodically sent radio signals. In addition, smoke bombs and bags of dye (fluorescein) were scattered in the area of ​​the descent, which colored the sea water bright green. The dive began in the center of this spot. The operation was supported by auxiliary ships "Wondek" and "Lewis" under the leadership of Dr. Andreas Regnithuer.
The descent proceeded safely, except for a temporary loss of communication with the mother ship. It is curious that the loss of communication (acoustic) occurred both during the descent and ascent at the same depth, equal to 3900 m.
At great depths, the apparatus became very cold. Moisture accumulated in the gondola from breathing, so that Picard and Walsh's clothes soon became wet.
The researchers emerged from the submersible completely wet. They were shivering from the cold, since the temperature in the bathysphere was almost equal to the temperature of the deep layers of the ocean (about 2-3 ° C).
The Trieste took 4 hours 48 minutes to descend, and 3 hours 17 minutes to ascend. The submersible remained at the bottom for 30 minutes.
Both during the descent and ascent, the researchers, in the light of powerful searchlights, were able to detect the inhabitants of the ocean depths. Life was everywhere, right down to the bottom. In the surface layers of the ocean, through the porthole, one could see the white bodies of sharks; in the middle layers, shrimp and plankton predominated; at the yellowish bottom of the depression, in the light of an external spotlight, the researchers saw a silver-colored animal, similar to a flounder, about 30 cm long and completely flat with bulging eyes at the top parts of the head. The animal moved along the bottom, approaching the submersible and was not at all afraid of the spotlight. Another living organism was a giant shrimp (about 30 cm long), which calmly swam two meters from the bottom of the depression.
Finding fish and shrimp at such a huge depth seems to be a major scientific discovery, since until recently fish were found up to 7200 m, and shrimp only up to 5000 m.
The descent of Picard and Walsh to the bottom of the deepest depression in the World Ocean proved the full possibility of a long-term stay of a person at the greatest ocean depths in an autonomous vehicle. This opens up tempting prospects for humanity for the exploration and industrial use of the mineral wealth of the ocean floor. It is possible that the bathyscaphe will be widely used in deep-sea drilling operations, in particular, in the implementation of the so-called “Moho project,” which involves drilling through a layer of bottom sediments about 1 km thick and through the earth’s crust, reaching only 5-8 meters below the ocean floor. km (underland its thickness is 30-40 km). These drilling operations are supposed to be carried out in the open ocean from a ship at anchor.
The bathyscaphe is an important means of modern oceanographic research. It allows you to observe life at the depths, get an idea of ​​the topography of the seabed with details of its relief, such as small holes, holes, mounds, medium-sized ridges and, as it were, sastrugi on the seabed. They are too large to be captured by the camera, but too small to be detected on the echo sounder tape. In addition, during deep-sea diving, bottom currents are measured, soil samples are taken selectively with visual control of this process, gravity is measured at the bottom of the deep sea, the conditions of sound propagation in the marine environment are studied, and much, much more.
It is not surprising that designers in a number of countries are working to improve the bathyscaphe. In the USA, in 1959, the construction of the Setase bathyscaphe was completed. Its designer, engineer Edmund Martin, took into account the experience of building and operating Trieste and FNRS-3. First of all, he achieved great independence of the apparatus from the mother ship. The bathyscaphe is equipped with two diesel engines, providing a surface speed of up to 10 knots. The vessel has a 160-hour diesel fuel reserve, allowing the vessel to travel 1,600 nautical miles (3,000 km) on its own. Underwater, using battery power, the submersible can travel 40 miles (72 km) at a speed of 7 knots (13 km/h).
Another feature of the Setase is its relatively large crew. The cabin can comfortably accommodate 5 people (including a cameraman and photographer). The total weight of the bathyscaphe in the air is 53 tons, the length of the light hull is 13 m. The estimated diving depth is 6 km.

Water, if its pressure is strong, washes away any obstacles. Just as spontaneously, three hundred million years ago, life overcame the coastal barrier, poured onto the land and took over the world, which was previously inaccessible and alien to it. And today we humans are striving to become amphibious creatures. “Humanity needs to “restructure” towards the ocean - this is inevitable...” said the famous Soviet scientist, academician L. A. Zenkevich, expressing the opinion of many.

Why is this step needed and what will it give? Usually in such cases they say that the ocean can and should become the breadbasket of a growing humanity. It's right. It is also true that at the bottom of the World Ocean there are innumerable reserves of oil and metals, which are sometimes already in short supply on land, and colossal riches of the rarest and most valuable elements are dissolved in the water itself. But life also moved to land in its time in pursuit of food, energy and space. She found all this there, but she also found something else: the spiral of evolution unfolded on land like a spring, and the result was the emergence of intelligence. What kind of push will we get? Mastering a new environment will enrich our spiritual world; obstacles along the way will sharpen our minds. The development of the ocean is inextricably linked with all its roots to the prosperity of mankind. “Through thorns to the stars,” the ancient Romans were right.

It must be said, however, that not all scientists are unanimous in their opinion on what methods and means should be used to explore the depths of the sea, for starters - the closest and most accessible shelf to us, the continental slope, extending 100-300 kilometers from the coast. A number of oceanologists, for example, believe that scientific research of the ocean, exploration and extraction of mineral resources, installation and repair of equipment, and laying of pipelines should be transferred to remotely controlled machines and robots. “Sometimes,” argues the famous American oceanographer Arthur Flechsig, “an argument is heard against man’s presence in the sea elements. The point is that instead of people, you can send instruments and machines into the depths that will cope with tasks just as well, if not better, or at least quite successfully. It is clearly unnecessary to use people if the tasks are purely simple... However, being made about the study of complex phenomena, this statement, in my opinion, represents sheer nonsense or, more charitably, an arbitrary opinion.” Indeed, the experience of offshore oil workers shows that in the vast majority of cases, when performing complex and important work under water, human presence is necessary. Will the technology improve? That’s right, but the complexity of tasks will also increase, and robots as perfect as humans are a utopia in the foreseeable future.

So a person most likely must inhabit the depths of the sea himself. Is he capable of this? Water, pressure, darkness... For example, you can dive, but live?

Years and meters

Ocean exploration is often compared to space exploration. The methods of exploration, however, turned out to be opposite: automatic stations were the first to go into space, and man himself stepped into the ocean. First, “without anything” - to a depth of several tens of meters. Then - already in the 19th century - dressed in a spacesuit, which allowed him to descend to a depth of 80 meters and work there for a short time. However, as Jacques-Yves Cousteau rightly noted, “the diver with his heavy lead boots turned out to be a pitiful and awkward prisoner of the water element”...

Free diving with scuba gear changed things radically. With scuba diving, a man finally felt like a fish in the water. Diving to depths of 40-50 meters became accessible to any healthy person, and for the first time people truly saw the beauty of the underwater world.

But scuba diving did not give me power over the depths. The lower a person dives with scuba diving, the more dangerous the compressed air he breathes is for him: oversaturation with oxygen causes convulsions and damages the lungs, and oversaturation with nitrogen “intoxicates” the swimmer and leads to decompression sickness. These physiological barriers seem to tightly block a person’s access to the depths. It is enough to remember what the essence of decompression sickness is: nitrogen injected under pressure dissolves in the tissues of the body and then boils during a rapid rise, like carbon dioxide when uncorking champagne. To avoid injury and death, a person is forced to climb very slowly, belaying himself at every step. For a depth of 150-200 meters, the decompression time is so long that diving work becomes unproductive: for minutes of work at the bottom you have to pay for hours of grueling ascent.

It is amazing, however, how quickly these seemingly “insurmountable” barriers were overcome! Now what seemed pure fantasy just 10-15 years ago is becoming a reality: a descent to a depth of more than half a kilometer. So far, however, such depths have been achieved only in a hydraulic chamber. But in fact this means that the shelf is now open to man.

Success is associated primarily with the name of the young Swiss scientist Hans Keller, who dared to suggest that the impossible is possible, did colossal research work and tested his theoretical calculations on himself. The laws of physiology cannot be changed, but the composition of the respiratory mixture, the mode of breathing, diving and ascent can be changed as desired. There are millions and millions of options here! Are there really no people among this infinity who would “guide” a person through all the dangers? This fact speaks volumes about the amount of work done here. Keller calculated on a computer 250 thousand variants of the gas mixture for breathing when a person rises from a depth of 300 meters. Products in the form of tables with various options for the diver’s exit to the surface weighed 9 kilograms! With this truly precious cargo, the scientist went to Lake Lago Maggiore, where, having descended to a depth of 222 meters, he emerged back, spending only 53 minutes on the rise. For comparison: Englishman George Wookey, who reached a record depth of 180 meters in 1956, took twelve hours to reach the surface!

Later, Keller broke his own record: having “sank” in a hydrochamber to a depth of 300 meters, he “rose to the surface” in 48 minutes...

What's the secret? One of the exit modes from a depth of 300 meters, proposed by Keller, looks like this. At a depth of 300-90 meters, the diver breathes a mixture of helium and oxygen. From 90 to 60 meters it uses a heavier nitrogen-oxygen mixture. From 60 to 15 meters he breathes argon-oxygen air, and from 15 meters - pure oxygen. At the same time, new combinations of gases seem to neutralize the harmful effects of the previous ones.

Things moved quickly, as soon as the general principle was understood, assimilated and tested. In 1960-1962, Keller dived in a special pressure chamber to a depth of 400 meters. In 1970, the British reproduced the descent to a depth of 457 meters. In November of the same year, two Frenchmen reach 520 meters. In 1972, the line of 565 meters was taken. Then... But more on that later.

Only one circumstance overshadowed the jubilation: in all these experiments the person “was at the bottom” for no more than twenty minutes. It turned out that a person can reach half a kilometer depths, but cannot master them. But the disappointment did not last long: it was discovered that it was easy to create conditions under which the decompression time practically did not depend on the length of time a person spent at great depths. This meant that if a house with a constant atmosphere and all amenities was built at the bottom of the sea, then a person could live in it for weeks, months, and he would only have to undergo decompression when reaching the surface.

Chronicle of underwater urban planning

Underwater houses began to appear one after another. The first such house was installed in 1962 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau at a depth of 10 meters near Marseille (“Precontinent-I”). Two aquanauts lived in it for 196 hours and proved that the theory was correct. The further chronicle looks like this. 1963: “Precontinent-II”, in which people have lived for a month (the immersion depth of the house is 11 meters). “Precontinent II,” Cousteau wrote, “convinced our group that industrial and scientific stations at the bottom of the sea would become common within our lifetime.” 1964: Americans install the Silab-I underwater house at a depth of 59 meters. Almost simultaneously, aquanauts John Lindbergh and Robert Stenuis spend two days at a depth of 130 meters in a “camping tent.” 1965: Sealab-II descends to a depth of 60 meters. The work manager, George Bond, this time chose “... the blackest, coldest, scariest ...” water that he could find on the edge of the underwater canyon. He “set out to prove that a person can perform useful work for a long time under conditions... corresponding to the real situation at great depths...”. The inhabitants of Sealab-II spent 45 days at the bottom. “Life in the depths of the ocean was so unusual and fascinating that I wouldn’t mind setting up a summer cottage under water for my family,” one of the participants in the experience noted, half-jokingly.

An interesting detail: the pioneer of the deep sea, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, intended to place his “Precontinent-III” at a depth of 33 meters. Having learned about the results of the experiment with Silab, he decided to plunge his underwater house immediately to a depth of 110 meters. “Life is short, and you need to do as much as possible!”

In Precontinent-IV, people spent three weeks working at a depth of 110-130 meters. This happened in the same 1965. Oceanauts, by the way, mounted an oil derrick at the bottom. It has been proven that at great depths a person can perform complex and difficult work even faster than on land.

1969: the underwater laboratory “Sileb-III” was lowered into the waters of the Pacific Ocean to a depth of 183 meters. However, an air leak was soon noticed. There was a call from the surface to the emergency team. Suddenly, during repair work, one of the crew members dies from a heart attack...

Has this tragedy delayed the advance into the deep sea? Judge for yourself. Ten years ago, the US government spent $29 million on underwater research and technology. Now - 500 million. It is planned to spend 5 billion over the next ten years.

The chronicle will be incomplete if we do not mention the work of researchers from other countries. About ten underwater settlements were created by Soviet scientists in the Black Sea. Cuban scientists, together with Czechoslovak colleagues, installed Caribe-I near Havana. Holland, Italy, and Japan have started or are starting experiments with underwater houses. All these works do not look as sensational as the works of the French and Americans, but they have a lot of unique things. For example, Dutch aquanauts will eat mainly seafood. In Italy, a project for a scientific town has been completed, which is supposed to be created at the bottom of a lake near Rome.

Nowadays, almost all scientists in the world agree on one thing: the development of the shelf of the World Ocean will be carried out in the next ten to fifteen years.

“I will dive a thousand meters!”

The human mind is designed in such a way that it is never satisfied with what has been achieved. The continental shallows will soon be developed, everything is clear about that. And what about the depths of the ocean? Will they ever become available?

Yes. And this will most likely happen within our century. According to a number of experts, in the next 30-40 years, an attempt will be made to build a station city with apartments and shops, institutes and factories, hospitals and theaters, streets and restaurants in the center of the Atlantic. However, this will require overcoming difficulties no less than when landing people on the Moon.

Let's start with the fact that at a depth of 3,500 meters, where the station is supposed to be built, the pressure is so great that a modern submarine there would experience the fate of a matchbox caught under a forge press. Generally speaking, metal is hardly suitable for such construction: crushing pressure can find the most microscopic crack in it and break the entire structure. The fact that metal bathyscaphes sank to great depths should not reassure us too much, because compression that lasts for hours is one thing, but compression that lasts for years is something completely different.

True, nature tells us something here. Thus, the idea for the design of “Precontinent-II” was inspired by a starfish, and the outlines of the new station “Sileb”, designed by the Americans (crew - 40 people, diving depth - 200 meters), resemble an octopus spread out on the bottom. Even more interesting engineering solutions are discovered when studying radiolarians and diatoms. This is a truly inexhaustible catalog of the most beautiful structures tested by nature at great depths.

But what about the material? If steels and alloys are no good, can anything replace them?

In principle, the material for underwater cities has already been found. This is glass. This fragile substance has one amazing feature: if a hollow glass ball is lowered into water, it becomes stronger with every meter. Experts call this phenomenal phenomenon deep hardening. The first experimental model of the future sphere-dwelling was made of a special type of glass and in 1969 tested at a depth of 3500 meters. The glass withstood the pressure perfectly.

Well, how will a person feel at these depths? You cannot give the body another shape, you cannot replace muscles with another material. Hundreds of atmospheres of pressure will fall on a person - but it’s like lying under a forge press!

Nevertheless, Hans Keller stated that he would dive to a depth of thousands of meters. Boasting? Marine organisms live even in the deepest depressions. But they don’t breathe air, their body is “designed” for depths of many kilometers, whereas the human body...

But it turned out that we clearly underestimate the abilities of our body. Judge for yourself. Hans Keller is about to dive to a depth of thousands of meters. Cousteau plans to live at this depth (Project Precontinent-VII). These people cannot be suspected of intending to commit suicide in such an extravagant way. They soberly calculated and weighed everything: a person can breathe and swim at a depth of a kilometer!

“But this is the limit,” some experts immediately noted. “A depth of a thousand meters is the natural limit below which a person cannot fall.”

As soon as this forecast was made, four volunteers slammed the pressure chamber hatch behind them and “sank” to a depth of 1520 meters! The brave Americans spent four hours in the pressure chamber; without any harm to health, by the way.

Should I give up my lungs?

There have always been, are and will be scientists who do not like traditional paths. Hyperbaric chambers, modes, and breathing mixtures win one hundred meters of immersion for a person after another, and yet there is no particular hope that as a result aquanauts will feel confident at any depth. So isn't it better to take a roundabout route? If the usual way of breathing does not allow a person to achieve the goal, then the way of breathing needs to be changed, that’s all. Let a person learn to breathe... water!

If this idea had been put forward by anyone other than the prominent Dutch physiologist, Professor Johannes Kilstry, then it would probably have been treated with skepticism, to put it mildly. Can lungs become gills?! Thousands of drowned people have proven this clearly. No, no, it's not serious...

Indeed. Of course, there is dissolved oxygen in water. But there are only seven milliliters of oxygen in one liter of liquid, while a liter of air contains about two hundred milliliters of oxygen. Difference! And the structure of the lungs is different from the structure of the gills.

Nevertheless, Kilstree was neither mad nor visionary. After all, before being born, a person breathes not air, but amniotic fluid. The lungs themselves, although different from the gills, have a similar function: in both cases, oxygen enters the blood through thin cell membranes, and carbon dioxide is expelled when exhaled.

To solve the problem of human water respiration, Kilstree reasoned, two obstacles must be removed. Firstly, as we have already said, water at atmospheric pressure contains 30 times less dissolved oxygen than the same volume of air. Therefore, a person must pass 30 times more water through the lungs than air. To remove the released carbon dioxide from the body, it is necessary, in turn, to “exhale” twice as much liquid as air. Considering that the viscosity of water is 36 times greater than air, you need to spend about 70 times more effort on this, which can lead to exhaustion. Secondly, sea and fresh water differ in chemical composition from blood, and if inhaled, it can damage the delicate tissues of the lungs and change the composition of fluids circulating in the body. To overcome these obstacles, Kilstree prepared a special saline solution, similar in its properties to blood plasma. A chemical substance was dissolved in it that reacts with exhaled carbon dioxide. Then pure oxygen was introduced into the solution under pressure.

The first experiments were carried out on white mice. The experimental animals were placed in a closed tank filled with saline solution. Oxygen was injected there under a pressure of 8 atmospheres (at this pressure the animal received the same amount of oxygen as when breathing air). After the dive, the mice quickly got used to the unusual environment and, as if nothing had happened, began to breathe salted and oxygen-enriched water! And they breathed it for ten to fifteen hours. And one record-breaking mouse lived in liquid for 18 hours. Moreover, in one of Kilstree's experiments, small, unprotected animals were subjected to a pressure of 160 atmospheres, which is equivalent to going under water to a depth of 1600 meters!

And yet, when the mice were returned to normal breathing conditions, most of the animals died. According to experimenters, the reason for the death of mice is that their respiratory organs are too small; when the animals come out into the air, the remaining water gets stuck in the lungs, and the animals die from suffocation.

Then Kilstree moved on to experiments on dogs. Like mice, dogs, after the first minutes of confusion, began to breathe water, as if they had been doing just that all their lives. After a certain number of hours, the dog was removed from the aquarium, the water was pumped out of its lungs, and then, by massaging its chest, it was forced to breathe air again. The dog's pulmonary respiration was restored without any harmful consequences. Later, Kilstree and his colleagues conducted a series of experiments in a high-pressure chamber, where both animals and experimenters were located. The dogs were not immersed in the liquid; they were simply forced to breathe through a special device with a saline solution with oxygen dissolved in it under pressure. Seven dogs survived without any health complications. One of them gave birth to 9 healthy puppies after 44 days.

Finally Kilstree decided to try water breathing on a person. American deep-sea diver Francis Faleichik volunteered. For safety reasons, testing was performed with only one lung. A double hose was inserted into the airway. Its ends were in the bronchi. Thus, each lung could breathe separately. Regular air entered only the left lung. The diver inhaled oxygenated salt water through a hose into his right lung. There were no complications. Francis Faleichik had no difficulty breathing. He... However, this is how Kilstree himself writes about this: “Faleichik, who was fully conscious throughout the procedure, said that he did not notice a significant difference between the lung breathing air and the lung breathing water. He also did not experience any unpleasant sensations when inhaling and exhaling a flow of fluid from the lung...”

However, despite the success of the first experiment with Faleichik, Kilstree is well aware that it is too early to celebrate. Although the respiratory fluid supplied the lungs well with oxygen without damaging its delicate tissues, it did not sufficiently remove carbon dioxide when exhaled.

But the breathing fluid can be more than just salt water; there are others that are more suitable. For the decisive experiment, when a person breathes liquid with both lungs, a special synthetic liquid is prepared - fluorcarbon, capable of containing three times more carbon dioxide and fifty times more oxygen than air. The next stage is the complete immersion of the person in the liquid. If everything goes well, a person will be able to descend to a thousand meters and rise from there without any decompression.

The problem of water respiration has fascinated many scientists in recent years. A number of interesting experiments with “underwater dogs” were carried out by the American E. Lampierre. Significant successes in experiments with mice were achieved by Soviet scientists, employees of the Kyiv laboratory of hydrobionics V. Kozak, M. Irodov, V. Demchenko and others. Enthusiasts have no doubt that in the near future they will provide aquanauts with a breathing device in which liquid will play the role of air.

Fantasy realism

When in the 30s, science fiction writer A. Belyaev introduced an underwater man, Ichthyander, in his novel, experts were unanimous in their comments: “A beautiful fiction that will never come true.” Time passed, and it turned out that the science fiction writer saw something that experts did not see: amphibious man is the reality of the future.

And not so far away. Thus, back in the early 60s, a message was published in the American press that one of the US companies was developing the design of a miniature device for saturating blood with oxygen. The idea is this. Artificial gills are attached to the diver's belt, and hoses coming from them are connected to the aorta. The aquanaut’s lungs are filled with sterile incompressible plastic, so they are, as it were, turned off, and the person, descending into the depths of the sea, breathes through “gills”, or rather, he stops breathing altogether, the blood is saturated with oxygen with the help of artificial gills.

Having learned about American developments of “artificial gills,” Jacques-Yves Cousteau spoke from the rostrum of the International Submariners Congress.

“If this project comes true, artificial gills will enable thousands of new Ichthyanders to dive to depths of 2 kilometers or more for an unlimited time!”

No less interesting is the following statement by Cousteau: “In order for a person to withstand pressure at great depths, his lungs should be removed. A cartridge would be inserted into his circulatory system that would chemically oxygenate his blood and remove carbon dioxide from it. A person would no longer be in danger of decompression; he could climb Chomolungma with a song on his lips. He would feel equally at home in the sea and in space. We are working on this. The first surgical experiments on animals will be carried out in 1975, and on humans - in 1980...”

About ten years have passed since then. They are trying to implement Cousteau's idea. But this is not just about the technical difficulties of the problem. For example, it is possible to transform a “land man” into an “underwater man.” Is it necessary? Is it humane? What consequences will the artificial division of people into two races lead to?

The path proposed by the American engineer Walter Robb is more tempting and promising. Today this researcher can demonstrate a hamster sitting in an aquarium. This is not an underwater inhabitant; its body has not been altered. And yet, he and the fish scurrying nearby have something in common: both the hamster and the fish breathe oxygen dissolved in the water. The role of the gills is performed by a silicone film that covers the hamster. The thinnest silicone film has one remarkable property: it does not allow water to pass through, but molecules of oxygen dissolved in it rush through it; It also removes molecules of exhaled carbon dioxide into the water.

Independently of Robb, engineer Waldemar Ayres created artificial gills, this time for humans. In appearance, these gills resemble voluminous bags connected by hoses; the principle of their operation is similar to that just described. Ayres' application was long ignored by the US Patent Office; no one wanted to believe in the possibility of creating gills for humans. To convince the distrustful officials, Ayres invited them to the beach, put on gills and dived. He stayed underwater for an hour and a half, and the skeptics had to give up.

Ayres himself is confident that the apparatus he created will make man a completely amphibious creature. However, not all scientists share his optimism. But the principle itself is hardly in doubt. More recently, the Japanese reported such an improvement in the gills, which allows them to be used at considerable depths.

Water breathing... Artificial modification of the body... Gills for humans... It is still impossible to say for sure which of these means will allow a person to become an underwater inhabitant. However, there is no doubt that people will be able to live and work fruitfully at any depth. And then, not as a timid admiring guest, but as a true master, fully armed with science and technology, man will come to the World Ocean. “It is not true,” writes academician L.M. Brekhovskikh, “that man is a land creature. Living on a planet that is three-quarters covered with water and remaining a land creature is not the lot for humans...”

It is clear that we are not talking about the fact that a person should settle on the bottom of the ocean forever. Even an enthusiast of the idea of ​​“homo aquaticus”, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, in anticipation of future underwater cities, remarked: “We are fine under the sun.” Let us add: man is generally inseparable from the sun. He constantly needs his light, warmth, free wind, the smell of flowers, the rustle of leaves. Having become an amphibian, a person will inevitably return from the depths to the earth, to his native element. Otherwise, he will not be able to remain human. And if it becomes a matter of definitions, then the man of the future will be neither a “land man” nor an “underwater man”: he will be a “universal man.” One that can live on land, in the depths of the sea, and in the depths of space.

Izotiboris Litineckis