Her record-breaking deep sea dive has been compared by a Scottish scientist to scaling Mount Everest underwater.
Heather Stewart of Edinburgh participated in the deepest dive ever made by an all-female crew, unintentionally shattering the previous record.
aboard the South Pacific Ocean, she accomplished the accomplishment alongside her New Zealand colleague Kate Wawatai aboard the Bakunawa submersible.
The nearly 10-hour dive, which took place on April 16 as part of a research trip, led them 8,000 meters below the surface. Conversely, Everest reaches 9,000 meters.
After the expedition, marine geologist Prof. Stewart, 43, told News that she and her pilot partner had no idea they were about to break a world record.
It was only that day that I realized. “I think this might be the first occasion that an all-female submersible crew has fallen this deep,” Kate remarked as we descended.”
They are studying the 400-mile-long and 8,000-meter-deep Nova-Canton Trough, a geological structure known as a fracture-zone.
