After China’s submersible Jiaolong’s a new dive record after reaching a depth of 7,062 meters in the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench in June 2012, the Jiaolong has begun their first dive in the South China Sea on June 17.

In the diving operation, two out of three oceanauts are from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). They are YANG Bo, from the Institute of Acoustics, CAS and LIU Kaizhou from the Shenyang Institute of Automation under the CAS. The two oceanauts from CAS have dived a depth of 1,509 meters and tested the vessel’s acoustic, motion control system and auto-navigation software, which lasted for seven hours.

Liu Feng, chief commander of the mission, said the success of the dive had confirmed the submersible's ability to perform reliably.

Besides, this deep-sea dive had detected biological communities, and some biological specimens in the cold vents were seized. Meanwhile, a great amount of videos and images data of the sea bed dwellers were obtained.

The Jiaolong left east China's city of Jiangyin on June 17 to begin a 113-day-long mission that will include experiments designed to test its positioning system, biological surveys as well as geological sampling to be conducted in the Pacific Ocean. The mission marks the start of a five-year trial period for the Jiaolong before it goes into regular operation (Source: Xinhua).