Abstract
China’s 7000 m manned submersible JIAOLONG carried out an exploration cruise at the Mariana Trench from June to July 2016. The submersible completed nine manned dives on the north and south area of the Mariana Trench from the depth of 5500 to 6700 m, to investigate the geological, biological and chemical characteristics in the hadal area. During the cruise, JIAOLONG deployed a gas-tight serial sampler to collect the water near the sea bottom regularly. Five days later, the sub located the sampler in another dive and retrieved it successfully from the same location, which is the first time that scientists and engineers finished the high accuracy in-situ deployment and retrieval using a manned submersible with Ultra-Short Base Line (USBL) positioning system at the depth more than 6600 m. In this task, we used not only the USBL system of the manned submersible but also a compound strategy, including five position marks, the sea floor terrain, the depth contour, and the heading of the sub. This paper introduces the compound strategy of the target deployment and retrieval with the practical diving experience of JIAOLONG, and provides a promising technique for other underwater vehicles such as manned submersible or Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) under similar conditions.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 618-623 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | China Ocean Engineering |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:From June to July 2016, China’s 7000 m manned submersible JIAOLONG (Liu et al., 2010; Cui, 2013) carried out Leg II of the 37th China Dayang Cruises (CDCs) on the southwest area of the Mariana Trench, about 200 km south-west to Guam (142°25′E, 11°22′N). The diving area of this leg is on the south slope of the Challenger Deep, where the depth is from about 6300 m to 8300 m. This leg is funded by the Strategic Precursor Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences “Researches on Some Frontier Science and Technology Problems of Hadal Abyss”, which targets the basic sciences of hadal biology, environmentology and geology. This includes the biological structure, the high pressure adaptation mechanisms, and the evolution of hadal biological community. It also focuses on the spatial and temporal characteristics of hadal circulation, the environmental effect of gas release from the sea floor, and also the plate subducting
Funding Information:
Foundation item: This research was financially supported the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61703118), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFB0501703), Taishan Scholars Climbing Program of Shandong (Grant No. TSPD20161007), International Marine Resources Investigation and Development Program of China Ocean Mineral Resources R & D Association and the Strategic Precursor Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences. *Corresponding author. E-mail: ryg@ndsc.org.cn
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Chinese Ocean Engineering Society and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.
Keywords
- Mariana Trench
- USBL
- manned submersible
- target deployment and retrieval
