The deep sea is a vastly undiscovered ecosystem on our planet. Dr. Don Walsh is one of the first people to go to the deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench. The expedition was run by the United States Navy who bought the Trieste Project from the inventors in 1958. Trieste is a deep diving Bathyscaphe that is able to carry two individuals to one of the most extreme locations on the planet, the bottom of the ocean. 

Dr. Don Walsh started his ocean exploration career before becoming formally educated in Oceanography. He did his Ms and PhD 8 years after his dive on the Trieste expedition. Since then he has been educating and consulting globally on a variety of ocean-related issues. From his first dive, Walsh has seen submersibles grow in popularity and be replaced with ROVs and AUVs. He predicts that remote controlled submersibles are helpful tools in deep-sea ocean exploration.

As for the future of seep sea exploration, “We need to fully explore that 90% of the World Ocean that is still unexplored…The deep trenches are the real frontier and we [need] to do much more in those places which represent only 2% of the seafloor area.”