Underwater Records to be Broken
Atlanta (Global Adventures): Most divers know that Pascal Bernabé currently holds the record for the deepest confirmed scuba dive (story here). However, other records documented include the following:
Mark Gottlieb performed a rendition of Handel's Water Music in March 1975 while submerged in Evergreen State College swimming pool in Olympia, Washington. A microphone pick-up was attached to a violin body - and fed into an amplifier above water. Speakers both above and underwater gave the audience both in and out of the water listening ability.
Over the next few years, various concerts were given throughout the world in pools, oceans and even in the Shark Tank at Marine World in Northern California. Of course the theme from Jaws was played in the Shark Tank.
The deepest recorded dive by a mammal was made by a bull sperm whale off the coast of Dominica in 1991. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) recorded the dive to a depth of 6,500 feet (2,000 meters). The dive lasted one hour 13 minutes.
An emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) did dive to 1,584 feet (483 meters.) The dive was recorded in 1990 in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The same species also holds the record for the longest known dive by a bird - 18 minutes, observed at Cape Crozier, Antarctica in 1969.
In May 1987, it was reported by Dr. Scott Eckert that a leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) fitted with a pressure-sensitive recording device had reached a depth of 3,973 feet (1,200 meters) off the Virgin Islands in the West Indies.
The deepest part of the ocean was first determined in 1951 by HM Survey Ship Challenger in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean. On January 23, 1960, the US Navy Trieste vessel descended to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and on March 24, 1995, the Japanese probe Kaiko recorded a depth of 10,911 m (35,797 ft), the most accurate measurement yet taken.
The deepest manned ocean descent took place on January 23, 1960 when Dr. Jacques Piccard (Switzerland) and Lt. Donald Walsh, US-Navy, piloted the bathyscaphe Trieste to a depth of 10,911 m (35,797 ft) in the Challenger Deep section of the Mariana Trench.
The largest known underwater wedding took place on September 13, 2003. 105 divers (including the bride, groom and minister, Captain John Macy) submerged themselves completely in the waters of Rainbow Beach, St Croix, Virgin Islands, to witness the marriage ceremony between Toni Wilson and John Santino. A table was placed on the sea bed at a depth of about 3 m (10 ft), and witnesses signed a laminated guest registry. The event went smoothly with the exception of guests causing some siltout when asked to kneel to observe the ceremony.
On June 20, 1997, a group of 12 journalists representing Spanish newspapers and TV stations did dive to a depth of 52 feet (16 meters) off El Hierro, Canary Islands, to observe the launch of Champion's Secrets, an underwater photo manual written by Carlos Virgili Ribé. This unique press conference was the result of over a decade of wet work photographing seascapes around the world from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The manual was displayed to journalists using a special sunken lectern.
Italian Vittorio Innocente cycled 3,937 feet (1,200 meters) in 23 minutes 54 seconds underwater in an Olympic-sized swimming pool in Chiavera, Italy on April 12, 2000. The Navy’s Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) in Panama City, Florida will just smile reading this and move on.
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