DeepFlight Challenger point of each of the world's five oceans, the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean (36,201 ft), the Puerto Rico Trench of the Atlantic Ocean (28,232 ft), the Diamantina Trench of the Indian Ocean (26,401 ft), South Sandwich Trench of the Southern Ocean (23,737 ft), and Molloy Deep of the Arctic Ocean (18,399 ft). The Cheyenne yacht will be used as the mothership for the dive efforts. It was planned that Branson would pilot the sub to the Puerto Rico Trench, while Chris Welsh would pilot it for the Mariana Trench dive. Virgin Oceanic had hoped to be the first
Manila Trench Manila Trench The Manila Trench is an oceanic trench in the Pacific Ocean, located west of the islands of Luzon and Mindoro in the Philippines. The trench reaches a depth of about , in contrast with the average depth of the South China Sea of about . It is created by subduction, in which the Sunda Plate (part of Eurasian Plate) is subducting under the Philippine Mobile Belt, producing this almost N-S trending trench. The convergent boundary is terminated to the north by the Taiwan collision zone, and to the south by the Mindoro terrane (Sulu-Palawan block colliding with SW