If he brings an creatures back...
Won't they explode from suddenly not having 1 tonne/cm2 pressure on their exterior?
Humans get messy enough when they get just 15psi (apprx 1 bar) less exterior pressure (outer space)
James Cameron, the man behind water-logged blockbusters like Titanic and The Abyss, has announced his intention to dive alone to the deepest point in the ocean in the next few weeks and bring back some of the alien creatures that live there. Cameron has already dived deeper than any other human on a solo mission, when he …
> Won't they explode from suddenly not having 1 tonne/cm2 pressure on their exterior?
Unlikely.
Marine animals are (predominantly) water, and that is incompressible. So although they might experience problems from the reduction in pressure, there will be essentially no change in volume.
I have used the "predominantly" qualifier because some marine life has a swim bladder - a gas-filled space. This would definitely burst. It was exactly that problem that led to Richard Pyle deriving his deep-stop decompression system...
> Humans get messy enough when they get just 15psi (apprx 1 bar) less
Humans have large airspaces (e.g. lungs). Gases expand and compress readily under changing pressure.
Vic.
Swim bladder is an issue if a fish is brought up quickly. But deep sea fish are adapted to pressure and bringing them up runs a good chance of killing them anyway.
Oceanopolis aquarium in Brest has just built an aquarium for deep sea fish display and its designed to exert huge pressure so they can survive., the aquarium only holds about 16L of water, the aquarium itself with all the kit needed to keep that pressure weighs 600kg.
Dunno how they bring the fish up to get it in there though must take some planning with deco and such.
> Surely if they've been at those dark depths for so long, eyes would
> have long-since vanished through non-use?
I don't know about the creatures living in the Trench, but no - many deep-sea creatures still have eyes - often far better-developed than our own. Despite the enormous attenuation of the light, there is still enough to see by if you have the right equipment.
There are even deep-water fish who are not bottom-dwellers that have bioluminescent undersides so that hunters don't see them as a shadow above...
Vic.
Following the release of Avatar, there was a rumour that a sequel was coming, focusing on an underwater environment. I wonder how much of this is connected to ideas/inspiration for that?
Agree about the LED array - I wonder what the impact of his visit might be? A load of blind fish and corroding steel junk to kill off those that don't die of starvation/become prey? Doesn't sound too clever.
> A load of blind fish and corroding steel junk
The corrosion thing is interesting. At those depths, the water should be pretty close to anoxic, so normal rusting won't occur.
The same is true of the Titanic - where long, rust-coloured trails known as "rusticles" occur. These are actually bacteria-created; the ship is being digested by the bacteria.
The Mariana Trench is quite a bit deeper than the Titanic site. I wonder how much there will actually be to see down there...
Vic.
"1,125kg per square centimetre"
If you're going to insist on using non-register units, then please use ISO units of Pascals. At least you'll get a really big number! (I personally dislike the Pascal as a unit, as a Newton isn't much force, and a metre squared is a relatively large area, so you rapidly start having to use MegaPascals by the time you have significant pressures).
So what would the El Reg unit of pressure be, as there doesn't seem to be one in the list?
It's not just air spaces like swim bladders and lungs. As pressure is reduced, gasses come out of solution. For an example of this, consider the liquid inside your unopened bottle of <preferred fizzy beverage>. When you release the seal on the cap, the pressure drops and CO2 comes out of solution to form bubbles.
Read more about the effects here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_sickness
I think it's safe to say nothing from that depth will survive being brought to the surface - even if you allowed years for the decompression.
As for leaving lumps of steel down there, it's won't bother anything. In fact, some organisms will positively thrive on the tasty feast left for them - yes, there are marine organisms that "eat" steel.
Some things will survive see my post earlier about Brests public aquarium.
But I still am not sure how they will do so, a big issue will be other biochem changes in the body, metabolisms and chemicals adapted to working at those depths and tempratures may do things like speed up and go into overdrive in warmer near surface tempratures.
> It's not just air spaces like swim bladders and lungs.
Yeah, it is for deep-sea marine animals...
How much dissolved gas do you think there will be?
> even if you allowed years for the decompression.
You might want to read up on saturation diving before making such assertions; there is a limit to how much gas goes into any tissue space, and hence how much can ever come out.
Whatever might happen to a marine animal on the way to the surface, getting bent isn't going to be the problem.
Vic.
We've just had notification elsewhereville that the life-support kit in this sub is British-built.
It comes from a company in Cornwall called Ambient Pressure Diving. These are the guys that make my dive kit. Cameron will be diving an overgrown version of my rebreather :-)
Congratulations to Martin and his team at AP.
Vic.
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