In one of the most significant milestones in oceanography, Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans. Their vessel, the bathyscaphe 'Trieste,' reached a depth of approximately 10,911 meters (35,797 feet) in a region known as the Challenger Deep. The descent took nearly five hours, and the crew spent only 20 minutes on the ocean floor, where the pressure was over 1,000 times that at sea level. This expedition proved that life could exist even in the most extreme depths, as the men observed a flatfish and shrimp on the seafloor. The mission remained the only manned descent to the Challenger Deep for 52 years until James Cameron's solo dive in 2012, highlighting the immense difficulty and danger of deep-sea exploration.