The Emden Deep, part of the Philippine Trench, is one of Earth’s final frontiers, an unexplored section of one of the oldest seabeds in the world.
It was really the mental preparation, being in a small submersible without freaking out while you’re diving and saying goodbye to the world,” he recounted.
“If you look at the Philippine Trench, the first description was in the 1950s and then the more detailed one was in the 1970s.
It was an opportunity for us to see what’s happening down there, which has never been seen before,” Onda said.
The pair initially thought they had spotted a jellyfish, which was in fact a floating plastic bag.
“As an oceanographer and professor myself, most of the things I teach in the books were made by western scholars.
But seeing it myself was like a fairytale ... each and every page of my oceanography book coming into reality,” he said. »
