Under Pressure
What are the challenges to exploring the deep ocean? Dr Anjani Ganase considers light and pressure beyond 300 metres deep. Hard to imagine the weight of water at a thousand metres deep; far less deep in the abyss. We’ve all experienced that first plunge under the surface as a child; the frantic kicking of the legs to propel the body downwards; then the blurriness and burning of the eyes followed quickly by the build up of pressure in the ears to make us give up and return to the surface. I would spend hours at the beach, heels above my head trying to push the limits just to catch a view of the bottom and any fish or creature below. The first lesson was how to equalise the pressure in the ears to go a little bit deeper and to stay longer just to catch glimpses of the underwater world through short windows of 30-second breaths at 4 or 5 m deep. If we wish to go beyond ten metres, we generally need SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) equipment to observe a...