Victor Vescovo (MBA 1994) had been descending through the waters of the Pacific Ocean for more than two hours. The headlights on the exterior of his state-of-the-art submersible illuminated only a tiny slice of this strange world. An aquatic creature he couldn’t identify floated by.

Fifty-three-year-old Vescovo, his long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, meticulously monitored the operation of the submersible, which he had christened the Limiting Factor. He watched the depth gauge creep up: 7,192 meters, the depth of his dive to the bottom of the Java Trench; 7,434 meters, the depth he’d reached at the bottom of the South Sandwich Trench; 8,376 meters—now he had surpassed the deepest point he’d ever taken the Limiting Factor, on an earlier descent to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench.

His board was green—all systems go—as he dropped below 8,484 meters, the height of Mount Everest. Vescovo had reached that summit on his second try in 2010. The battered ice axe he had relied on during the climb was now secured within the the submersible’s body. It reminded him of the intense physical strain of those days on the mountain, the punishing cold and the knowledge that some might lose their lives in their quest to reach the world’s pinnacle. Inside the compact submersible, Vescovo was as comfortable as anyone on a long-haul flight in coach. But he knew that just 90 millimeters of titanium protected him from 12,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

He dove deeper.

“Surface. LF. Depth 1-0-9er-2-8 meters,” Vescovo reported, about three-and-a-half hours after he slipped beneath the waves on the morning of April 28. Through the small windows of the submersible, he could see a cloud of tawny silt erupt as the Limiting Factor touched down. “At bottom. Repeat. At bottom.”

Vescovo was all alone at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest section of the Mariana Trench, about 175 miles southwest of Guam and almost 7 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. It would take about 7 seconds for his message to reach the support ship, the Pressure Drop, so for the moment Vescovo was the only one who knew that—at 10,928 meters below sea level—he had traveled deeper than any human before him. His name would go in the record books alongside others who had pushed themselves to the extreme: Roald Amundsen, who led the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911; Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first to stand atop Mount Everest, in 1953; and Neil Armstrong, the first on the moon, in 1969.

But Vescovo hadn’t gotten there by himself. To send one person to the most remote places on the planet, it had taken an estimated 200 people and four years of scientific advancement, team-building, and international cooperation. And the goal had never been a world record for one man. “We want to open the door for future exploration by science and business,” Vescovo later explained.

“Congratulations to you all,” Vescovo radioed to the crew aboard the Pressure Drop. “You made this happen.

“Beginning exploration of the bottom.”

He learned to fly planes at 19 and climbed Kilimanjaro at 22 because, he says now, “I had some time on my hands.” While at HBS, he joined the US Navy Reserves as an intelligence officer. Over the next two decades, he was involved with combat operations over Kosovo, Serbia, and Afghanistan, and counter-terrorism in the Pacific Rim before retiring as a commander in 2013.

Vescovo had already earned a place in the annals of exploration. When he reached the peak of Everest in 2010, he became one of just a few hundred people to have climbed all Seven Summits, the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents. Not long after, Vescovo joined an even more elite group, those who have also skied at least 60 miles to both the North and South Poles. He was the 54th person in history to achieve what is known as the “Explorer’s Grand Slam.”

But Vescovo was already looking for a new challenge, as he had been for as long as he could remember. His curiosity about the world and his intense pursuit of answers is so deeply ingrained Vescovo jokes that the impulse is in his genes. (Indeed, science has recently discovered several gene variants that seem more prevalent among explorers and adventure seekers.)

So, after reaching the highest points on the planet, Vescovo looked to its depths. He was surprised by what he discovered: No one had ever been to the bottom of four of the world’s five oceans. And only three people had descended to the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean: Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh, the crew of the Trieste, in 1960 (10,912 meters); and filmmaker James Cameron, aboard the Deepsea Challenger, in 2012 (10,908 meters). “The curious part of me asked, Why? What would it take? How would you do it?” Vescovo recalls.

“I thought of this as a businessman would,” he says from his home near Dallas, in early March, just after a successful dive in the South Sandwich Trench. He had the experience. Since 2002, he has been a managing partner at Insight Equity, a private equity firm he cofounded, and currently serves as chairman of four companies. This was, at its core, a business challenge: “I had to assemble and manage a worldwide team to develop a virtual product—diving to the bottom of all five oceans, and doing a lot of science along the way.” The Five Deeps Expedition, Vescovo said, has “proven to be as challenging as any business thing I’ve ever done in my life. Maybe the hardest.”

The first task was to acquire a submersible capable of diving these unexplored depths. Vescovo considered purchasing Cameron’s submersible, the Deepsea Challenger, but determined that the experimental vehicle would require too many updates to reliably allow repeated dives. The only other submersible designed to dive that deep was the Rainbow Fish, scheduled for completion by a Hong Kong–based startup sometime in the future but perennially delayed, it appeared. Vescovo realized he would have to build his own.

In May 2015, Vescovo approached Patrick Lahey, cofounder of Triton Submarines, which built submersibles designed to descend a maximum of 1,000 meters. Could the company build a vehicle capable of diving more than 10 times deeper, Vescovo asked. “That’s something I had wanted to do for many years,” says Lahey. “But without someone who’s going to finance a project of that difficulty and expense, there’s not much that a small company like ours can do.”

That’s one of the reasons that 80 percent of the world’s oceans—or more than half of the surface of the earth—remain unexplored: the cost. In Vescovo, the cause of oceanic exploration gained a benefactor who could self-fund an ambitious undertaking. In contrast to the government-funded space race of the 20th century, the extent to which the ocean has been explored has been—like so much exploration in the 19th century—driven by the scientific and historical curiosities of individuals. The late multibillionaire Paul Allen, who founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, funded the Petrel, the most advanced vessel for finding and exploring deepwater shipwrecks; it rediscovered the USS Indianapolis in 2017. Last year, Cameron and Ray Dalio (MBA 1973) launched OceanX to fund oceanic research that could help us better understand climate change and oceanic conservation. It currently has two high-tech submersibles rated to 1,000 meters and an elaborate new scientific vessel under construction. OceanX recently partnered with Michael Bloomberg’s (MBA 1966) Bloomberg Philanthropies on a four-year, $185 million effort to increase interest in and understanding of the oceans.

When the Five Deeps Expedition is completed, Vescovo hopes to sell the Triton-built Limiting Factor and other essential equipment for the dives to a government, philanthropic organization, or university. “We’ve now constructed a vessel that is commercially rated. It is highly reusable, highly safe, and can make many repeated dives to anywhere on the bottom of the ocean,” Vescovo says. “There’s no restriction anymore.” (He won’t discuss the total costs of this expedition, but the announced price tag of the submersible itself is $48 million dollars.)

Vescovo needed a support ship to launch and recover the submersible. He found a decommissioned US Navy ship laid up in a river in Washington State. The USNS Indomitable was originally built to hunt Soviet submarines at the end of the Cold War and was then used by the US Coast Guard for drug interdiction. It later became a research vessel for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two years of renovations were required to turn it into the DSSV Pressure Drop, a name Vescovo borrowed from a spaceship in author Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels. (Elon Musk also chose names from the science fiction series for his SpaceX vessels.)

Of course, the Limiting Factor and the Pressure Drop would need to be maintained, and the ship needed a crew. Vescovo tapped EYOS Expeditions to organize the trips and handle permits and logistics. A film crew from Atlantic Productions came on board to document the expedition for the Discovery Channel. As media interest in this odd endeavor increased, a public relations firm joined the growing team, too.

And Vescovo needed to know where to dive. He contacted Dr. Alan Jamieson, a deep-oceans expert at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, and asked for the coordinates of the deepest point in each ocean. Jamieson laughed, Vescovo recalls. No one really knew, not for sure. As a result, Vescovo took steps to equip the Pressure Drop with one of the most advanced sonar systems in use on a civilian ship; and Jamieson became the chief scientist on the expedition, overseeing a revolving crew of geologists, biologists, and oceanographers who collect and analyze data from every dive. They are studying the forbidding environments and the biodiversity that thrives in these places and the ways in which life can adapt to changing temperatures, pressures, and food supplies, among many other things. For Vescovo, it’s about the possibilities. The deeps could hold the answers to pressing questions on dry land: “We’re collecting biological samples and genetically sequencing them. We may find things that have chemical or biological capabilities that could significantly contribute to medical, materials, or other science.”

At each trench, previous scientific models identifying an ocean’s deepest point have been proven incorrect, Jamieson said from on board the Pressure Drop near the island of Vanuatu, 1,300 miles northeast of Australia. “And we’re seeing things we’ve never seen before.”

The Pressure Drop first spends several days mapping the area to find the deepest point. Then, the crew waits on Mother Nature—ideally, the weather must be clear and relatively calm. As the time of the dive approaches, the crew undertakes a “preflight” check, testing every system on the Limiting Factor before the retractable hangar is opened and the submersible is lowered alongside the ship. Vescovo dons his flight suit. Along the right sleeve of the blue coveralls are the flags of the United States, Texas, Albania (in honor of his girlfriend, Monika), and the United Nations, as well as the insignia of the Explorers Club—all important symbols to Vescovo. Three “landers,” unmanned submersibles for data collection, are dropped; they also serve as guideposts on the bottom of the ocean. Vescovo then lowers himself into the submersible, slipping through an opening barely wider than his shoulders, and closes the hatch.

“When you’re closing that hatch you can’t be claustrophobic, and you have to curb any instinctive fears you have of the deep, of the dark. You have to mentally steel yourself,” Vescovo says.  

In the South Sandwich Trench dive in March, the Limiting Factor was submerged in water that was 26 degrees Fahrenheit. (The salt and pressure lower the freezing point.) No one knew how the equipment would function under such harsh conditions. As Vescovo descended to 4,000 meters, he lost communication with the mother ship. He was miles beneath the same freezing waters that had nearly claimed explorer Ernest Shackleton and his team a century earlier, and he had only Prince George, a small stuffed penguin his sister had sewn for him, as a copilot.

“You just cannot panic,” Vescovo said later. “You have to just work the problem. What exactly is wrong? How can I fix it? How can I get back safely? You can’t freeze or, heaven forbid, rush and do something awful.” He went through his checklists with the deliberateness he had cultivated from years as a pilot. He believed the problem was temporary, a result of changes in water temperature. On the surface, the support crew walked through their own checklists to reestablish communication. They had faith in their submersible and their pilot, but they couldn’t help but worry. “I don’t know if I’ll ever forget that moment when it was gone,” recalled Anthony Geffen, the filmmaker who recorded the moment exclusively for a five-part documentary series that will air on the Discovery Channel this fall. “Who knows what could have happened?”

Procedure dictated that if he was out of contact for more than 30 minutes, he should abort the dive. But Vescovo had determined that, other than the communication issue, his submersible was functioning properly. He made the decision to continue the descent, and switched on some music: The Fixx’s “Deeper and Deeper,” Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m Goin’ Down,” and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” Four hours later, after he had reached the bottom of the trench and risen above 4,000 meters, the Pressure Drop heard his voice again.

As Vescovo descended into the Challenger Deep in April, he encountered another unexpected technological glitch. One of his landers—a homing beacon in the darkness of the deep—had released its anchoring weight early and was ascending toward him. A few minutes later, the other two landers also began rising as he continued to fall. Vescovo peered through the Limiting Factor’s window into the darkness below him, his hand on the throttle. If he saw the bright lights of one of the landers, he’d have to take evasive maneuvers. A collision that damaged the sensitive, lower portion of the submersible where the critical “drop weights” were located would certainly end the dive and possibly the expedition. After a few tense minutes, the Pressure Drop reported that the danger was over. The closest lander had passed silently about 200 meters from the submersible. Vescovo never saw it.

Without his landers, Vescovo would not be able to collect additional samples from the bottom, but that limitation was forgotten as he touched down in the correct location. He describes the moment as the feeling of summiting Everest. “You get to the top and at first it’s just a sense of relief: Oh, thank God, we did it. Then it kind of hits you, and you’re going, Oh, my gosh, I’m actually up here. Then you get down to business: What’s here to see?”

Vescovo spent more than four hours—248 minutes—exploring the bottom of the trench. “It’s like a moonscape,” he says. “But there’s also more detail than I thought there would be.” The landscape has varied significantly from dive to dive. The bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench was soft, almost like quicksand; Vescovo used the Limiting Factor’s thrusters to avoid sinking. The South Sandwich Trench was more rocky and rough; the Java Trench was full of marine life, including a previously unknown species of hadal snailfish and a previously unseen bottom-dwelling sea cucumber. But at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, Vescovo did encounter something he’s seen at most of the deeps: trash. It appeared to be a piece of plastic embossed with a stylized S. “I thought, is nothing completely safe from us?” He snapped a picture on his phone—evidence to show the world the need for better stewardship of the oceans—and continued his exploration.

On the surface, there were scientists awaiting the data Vescovo was collecting. It will be made available to the public and is expected to fuel years of research around the world. The ship’s crew was planning for upcoming dives, including one in the Tonga Trench, the second deepest in the world and the most geologically active, and then a voyage to the Molloy Deep in the Arctic (currently believed to be 5,669 meters deep), where Vescovo would attempt to complete his quest in August 2019.

Vescovo himself was already imagining the conclusion of a successful expedition: The Pressure Drop would cruise up the Thames into London, with the Limiting Factor on display on its deck, and Vescovo would present his findings at the Royal Geographical Society, like so many explorers before him. He’d even given thought to his next big adventure. “No one’s ever been to the top of Everest, the bottom of the ocean, and gone into space,” he mused.

But for just a moment, at the deepest point on earth, Vescovo let the submersible drift along this aquatic moonscape, leaned back in the pilot seat, and ate a tuna fish sandwich.

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