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What did the first scientists find to go down 8,000 meters of Atacama Fossa depth?

What did the first scientists find to go down 8,000 meters of Atacama Fossa depth?

For years, Chilean oceanographers Osvaldo Ulloa and Rubén EscribanNo human being had seen directly.

Ulloa and Notary, director and deputy director respectively of the Millennium Institute of Oceanography at the University of Concepción, in Chile, had resigned themselves to study the pit from the surface.

Together with his team they had first mapped part of the topography of the pit.During the Atacamex expedition in 2018 they had taken some photos, videos, water samples and DNA of the strange creatures that inhabit the bottom of this underworld.

BBC

Since getting to those ultraprofundities is technically more or less like going to the moon, dreaming of being face -to -face witnesses of its object of study was never an option.Until now.

Both scientists descended to the place last week with the expedition of the American explorer Víctor Vescovo, who in 2019 became the first person to visit the five deepest points of the five oceans piloting a submersible specially built for that purpose.

Ulloa, Escribano and Vescovo are the first human beings to descend to the pit.

Angela Posada

Each of the two trips lasted a total of ten hours, for which the aquanauts literally had to dehydrate the night before, wear warm clothes and make sure to pack a pairing.

In two separate dives, Ulloa first and a notary later boarded Vescovo a very small titanium sphere covered by a thick protective coating of synthetic foam.

Baptized as the limiting factor, in honor of the fiction novels of Ian Banks, the submersible is the technological wonder that is routinely opening the doors to the exploration of the so -called Hadal area of the oceans, that is, everything there isbelow 6,000 meters.

Qué encontraron los primeros científicos en bajar 8.000 metros de profundidad de fosa de Atacama

"This was the adventure of my life and a cusp in my career as a researcher in Sea Sciences," Ulloa, 60 years old, told BBC Mundo, minutes after that immersion and already on the Nodriza Pressure Point ship.

Silence and music at the bottom of the sea

"The interior of the sphere is dark gray, it has two comfortable chairs, and it is covered with oxygen tanks and switches for the entire electronics. In the lower part there are three ox eye windows that allow the view of the seabed. I was impressed by thesoftness of the journey, and silence, only interrupted by communications with the surface. "

The descent to the deepest point of the pit -8.069 meters, according to the maps that had been made the day before- took three and a half hours.Ulloa imagined that he was going to get bored, but between moments of conversation with Vescovo, they ended up listening to music.

Nick Verola - Caladan Oceanic

Ulloa put a song by Chilean singer Mon Laferte, and showed Vescovo photos of his son, who lives in Sweden.In turn, Vescovo chose Hotel California, of The Eagles group and told him about his motivations to end up exploring the depths.Then, with a laugh, they decided that when they return they would have time to see a piece of the Spanish series El Cid.So it was.

At some point during the descent ate half of their matches: tuna, for Vescovo, and egg salad for Ulloa.

Once in the background, Vescovo maneuvered the ship flying over an amazing terrain of valleys, ridges and other rock formations that will show important information regarding the characteristic geology of this region of the planet.

"The large number of Holoturias also caught our attention, a kind of marine cucumber that has been found in other graves, but which were present here with great abundance," says Ulloa.

"But if there is something that I, as a microbiologist, wanted in this expedition it was to find tapestries of microbes colonies. And that is why, seeing them with my own eyes was something extraordinary, the confirmation for the first time of its existence in the Atacama pit and tomore than 8,000 meters. "

Victor Vescovo/Caladan Oceanic

Cities architect worms

For Rubén Escribano, 64, the experience, two days later, was equally intense.

Since its interest is the fauna, Vescovo descended only to 7,330 meters, exploring the eastern slope of the pit in search of more abundance of organisms.

They found unexpected creatures for such depths as cold water corals and a lonely sea star.They were also able to observe animals present in greater quantities than in any other pit studied so far, including polystic worms, amphipode crustaceans and other hadal beings that are just now start studying.

"They told me that we had to study the pit, but they didn't tell me that we had to go to it," wrote Escribano as soon as he left the submersible and put his feet on deck.

"It was something magical; like descending on another planet and seeing the structures built by these beings. I imagined that they were tiny cities made by the worms and crustaceans that make paths in the sediment."

Nick Verola - Caladan

The Atacama Hadal expedition also made high resolution maps of several stretches of the Atacama pit, which with 5,900 kilometers of extension is one of the longest cracks of the oceanic depths, a formidable structure that was born where the Nazca plate sinks underthat of South America, which causes earthquakes and tsunamis that hit this region.

The maps will be key to determining the optimal place where to install the sensors of a future project to establish the first observation system anchored in the deep ocean, a titanic budding effort of the Chilean scientific community.

Study how the physical, geochemical and biological conditions present in the area will change the scientific basis that can be used to eventually observe the effects of climate change in the high depths and better understand the processes caused by the large earthquakes and tsunamis in theregion.

"We have had a unique access towards making a leap to Chilean oceanographic science, and I trust that this achievement will inspire new generations," said Ulloa.

For its part, Vescovo says he is committed to the effort to continue mapping tens of thousands of square kilometers per month to support the Gebco 2030 initiative, which seeks to complete the map of the entire seabed by 2030.

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