Exploring the great depths

Chinese submersibles expert promotes undersea exploration among youth, Li Yingxue reports.

Yang Bo speaks to young people, especially students, about undersea resources these days. The researcher at the Institute of Acoustics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is a designer and pilot of Jiaolong, China's first manned deep-sea research submersible that can touch depths of more than 7,000 meters below sea level.

Ever since the Chinese vessel succeeded in reaching a depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean in 2012, Yang, 39, has been sharing his experiences in public also in the hope of popularizing science among the country's youth. And, his talks about the mysteries of the sea are getting many of his young audiences interested in the subject.

China's 7,000-meter manned submersible project was proposed in 1992 and finally started 10 years later. The challenge was to test the vessel's capability of real-time communication, microphotography detection and sampling in a moving state at a designated area undersea.

The submersible was named after the mythical dragon Jiaolong.

Yang joined the project team in 2005 focusing on the acoustic communication system after he had completed his master's at the Beijing Institute of Technology.

After its designing, manufacturing and on-land test, the vessel had to go through a open water-tank test. Then it entered the final stage-sea trials-also the most challenging among all tests.

In 2005, China had only successfully dived some 600 meters undersea. And, due to the lack of prior experience, the trials of Jianglong were carried out from shallow to deep waters step by step-0 meter, 50 meters, 300 meters, 1,000 meters, 3,000 meters, 5,000 meters and 7,000 meters.

In 2009, Jiaolong started its first sea trial in the South China Sea and Yang got an additional role as a pilot, as he knew much about the acoustic communication system of the vessel. The acoustic communication system of Jiaolong is like human eyes, mouth and ears used to communicate, locate and map the undersea landform through acoustic emissions and reception.