BEIJING—China plans an ultradeep dive by a manned submersible beneath the Pacific that would propel it past the U.S. in a race to explore potentially vast mineral resources in the deepest parts of the world’s oceans.

The Jiaolong—named after a mythical sea-dragon—left China on board an oceanographic research ship on July 1. It arrived on Saturday at its destination in the northeastern Pacific, between Hawaii and North America, where it is to attempt a dive to 5,000 meters, or about 16,400 feet, according to state media reports.

The state-run Xinhua news agency on Saturday quoted Liu Feng, the director of the diving trials, as saying the sea was too rough to attempt the first of its planned four dives before Wednesday. “We’ll use this time to do our preparatory work down to the last detail, and as soon as sea conditions improve, we’ll start sea trials,” he was quoted as saying.

Xinhua quoted Liu Cigui, director of the State Oceanic Administration, on Saturday that a “marvel” of Chinese manned submergence would occur in the next 15 days. The administration, which is overseeing the mission, didn’t respond to a request to comment.

The planned dive would be the latest milestone for China in a high-stakes technological race once dominated by the U.S., which in 1960 sent two men to the bottom of the Mariana Trench—at 11,033 meters the deepest point in the world’s oceans—in the now-retired Trieste bathyscaphe.

The U.S. led undersea exploration and mining efforts for several decades thereafter, but commercial interest waned in the 1980s and 1990s because international prices for nickel, copper and other commodities thought to be most easily mined from the deep seabed at the time were insufficiently high.

The U.S. Navy used to operate three manned submersibles, including one, called the Sea Cliff, that was capable of going down to 6,000 meters, but didn’t replace it after its retirement because of defense cutbacks in 1998.

Now, many experts say the U.S. risks falling behind potential commercial and military competitors as rising commodity prices make undersea mining more profitable, and China and Russia apply for rights to explore newly discovered deep-sea deposits thought to hold larger quantities of silver, gold, copper, zinc and lead in particular.

The race has commercial, scientific and military implications comparable to space exploration, in which China is also now a world power as one of only four countries—alongside the U.S., Russia and India—capable of manned space flight.

Although Chinese officials say the Jiaolong is for civilian purposes only, foreign military experts say such a craft could be used to intercept or sever undersea communications cables, to retrieve foreign weaponry on the ocean floor, or to repair or rescue naval submarines.

Its primary purpose, however, is to help explore potentially huge but hitherto inaccessible undersea reserves of the metals and other natural resources that China needs to keep its economy growing, said Chinese and foreign experts.

China developed the Jiaolong as part of an ambitious deep-sea ocean-exploration program that was launched in 2002, and also includes plans to start building a deep-sea exploration center in the eastern city of Qingdao, where the Jiaolong will be based.

“This definitely was no ‘rush to headlines’ but rather a carefully evolved program,” said Don Walsh, an undersea-engineering consultant and former U.S. naval officer who was on the Trieste in 1960 and has met the team that designed the Jiaolong.

“I believe we will see more manned and unmanned submersibles from this team,” he said in an email. “And they will be welcome additions to the world ‘fleet’ of undersea vehicles. Collectively we need as many ‘eyes’ in the deep oceans as possible since there is so much we do not know about the ‘mysterious deep,’ ” he said.

He also said the Jiaolong’s designers had purchased a lot of “off the shelf” technology from overseas, and had benefited from training dives on the U.S.Navy’s Alvin manned submersible, which is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The institution didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Jiaolong passed its first major benchmark last year when it dived to 3,759 meters beneath the South China Sea—site of territorial disputes among China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines— and planted a Chinese flag on the ocean bed.

That dive put China in an exclusive club of only five countries—along with Japan, Russia, the U.S. and France—that can explore the ocean below 3,500 meters.

If the Jiaolong’s current mission is successful, it will attempt to dive next year to 7,000 meters, the maximum depth it is designed to withstand, said officials involved in the project. That would put it ahead of Japan’s Shinkai submersible, which can dive to 6,500 meters, and Russia’s Mir, which can go down to 6,000 meters and was used to plant a Russian flag on the ocean floor beneath the Arctic in 2007.

It would also allow China to access an estimated 99.8% of the all the world’s seabed, said Chinese officials and experts.

The most capable U.S. deep-sea manned submersible still in service is the Alvin, which was launched in 1964 and can dive to a maximum of 4,500 meters. An upgraded version, designed to go down to 6,500 meters, isn’t due to be completed until 2015.

A submersible differs from a submarine in that it typically relies on a mother ship, has little use on the surface, but can achieve great depths and is highly maneuverable underwater. The Jiaolong is 27 feet long and has a round titanium hull to protect its maximum three passengers from the enormous pressure of the deep sea.

“It looks like a great white shark, with a white, round-shaped body, an orange head, and an X-shaped stabilizer at the rear,” Xinhua quoted Xu Qinan, the Jiaolong’s chief designer, as saying. It will need two hours to reach the seabed, where it will take video and photographic images, as well as topographical measurements and samples from the ocean floor, he said.

The Pacific test site was selected because the state-run China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association, also known as Comra, signed a contract in 2001 with the International Seabed Authority, a United Nations body that oversees mining in international waters.

The 15-year contract initially allowed Comra to explore 150,000 square kilometers of seabed for polymetallic nodules—small rocks containing metal ore—although the area was reduced to 75,000 square kilometers after eight years.

ISA, which is based in Jamaica, is meeting to discuss, among other things, unprecedented applications from China and Russia to explore a more recently discovered mineral source, called polymetallic sulphides.

They are found around volcanic springs on the seabed and are thought to contain larger quantities of metals, especially gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper.

Oceans cover about 70% of the Earth’s surface and average about 4,000 meters deep.

The ISA estimates that polymetallic-sulphide deposits can range up to 110 million tons each, but only about 5% of 60,000 kilometers of oceanic ridges, where most deposits are thought to lie, have been surveyed in any detail.

According to ISA’s website, Comra applied in May 2010 for the rights to explore polymetallic-sulphide deposits in the Southwest Indian Ridge, which roughly bisects the sea between Africa and Antarctica.

Nii Allotey Odunton, ISA’s secretary-general, has described the applications from China and Russia as “groundbreaking in nature.”

ISA is also considering, for the first time, two applications for deep-sea exploration rights from private companies, sponsored by the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Nauru, in what Mr. Odunton called a “a new milestone in the life of the authority and for the regime for deep seabed mining.”

The U.S. isn’t a member of ISA as it hasn’t ratified the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Among those who have urged Washington to ratify the Convention are Thad W. Allen, a senior fellow at Rand Corp. and former commandant of the Coast Guard, Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, and John J. Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former deputy secretary of defense.

They made a public appeal in April, arguing that the move would “provide American companies with a fair and stable legal framework to invest in mining projects in the deep seabed,” as well as benefiting the military by codifying navigation and overflight rights.

- by Jeremy Page, Dow Jones & Company

Alvin, the manned submersible perhaps most famous for such exploits as locating a lost H-bomb in the Mediterranean Sea in 1966, exploring the first known hydrothermal vent sites in the 1970s, and of course surveying the wreck of RMS Titanic in 1986, is to be withdrawn from service this week to undergo a two-phase, $40m renovation – the biggest retrofit of its 40+ year career.

“The deep-ocean and seafloor beyond 4,500 meters water depth is this planet’s last frontier. A critical asset in this exploration is a more capable human occupied vehicle,” said Dr. Susan Humphris, the principal investigator on the upgrade project and a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which operates Alvin for the U.S. oceanographic community.  “Those capabilities will be achieved through a two-stage upgrade of the current Alvin that will ultimately allow the sub to stay down longer – up to 12 hours – and dive to 6,500 rather than 4,500 meters.”

Upgrades include:

During Stage 1, a new personnel sphere with improved ergonomics will be integrated into Alvin’s modified frame, and other improvements made to provide:

• Increased fields of view (with five viewports instead of three, and complete overlap with the pilot’s field of view)

• Improved illumination and imaging systems

• Improved data collection, logging, and interface capability

• Increased payload for Alvin’s basket for carrying samples and equipment.

As funding becomes available and as lithium ion battery technology matures, the changes necessary to increase the working time and extend the depth rating of the submarine will be completed.

Since it was put into service in 1964, Alvin has made more than 4,600 dives, playing a major role in important discoveries about the biological, chemical, and geological processes that shape our planet. Its personnel sphere was last upgraded in 1974, when a titanium sphere replaced Alvin’s steel sphere, extending its diving capacity and ultimately enabling firsthand observations of mid-ocean ridges.

The new 6,500 meter-depth-rated sphere is the biggest technical challenge of the Alvin upgrade project. It must be able to withstand immense pressure – about 650 times that felt on the surface of the Earth. The sphere, which is close to completion, has 3-inch thick titanium walls and tests have shown it is an almost perfect sphere.  Its interior volume has been increased by nearly 20 percent and has been redesigned – with input from more than 110 biologists, geologists, microbiologists, geochemists, and engineers – for greater scientific efficiency and a bit more comfort. Instead of crouching on the floor of the sphere, scientists will now have adjustable benches giving observers the option of sitting, kneeling, or lying flat.  And rather than just three viewports, the new sphere has five larger viewports, with overlapping fields of view enabling better observations, communication and coordination among those in the sub.

Alvin’s final dive before the re-fit was on December 14th in the Gulf of Mexico where it has been stationed since December 6th on an expedition searching for signs of oil and its impact on deepwater ecosystems.

Read more at WHOI.edu

Ever wonder how a huge FPSO is delivered to it’s destination? Shipspotting forum points us to Seven Marine’s photos of a recent heavy lift operation:

The FPSO Sevan Voyageur left Yantai Raffles Shipyard in China this morning. The FPSO is placed onboard a dry tow vessel and is on its way to the Keppel Verolme shipyard for topside hook-up and commissioning. FPSO Sevan Voyageur will be installed on the Shelley field in the central UK North Sea in 2008, under a five year contract with Oilexco North Sea Ltd.

Full sized photos HERE.

If you were lucky enough to be the owner of a multi-million dollar luxury superyacht, what kind of toys would you want to have on it to show off to your not so lucky friends.  A pair of jet skis? Child’s play.  A nice power boat?  Way too typical.  A heli-pad?  You’re starting to get the picture.  How about a full ocean depth winged submersible?  Now we’re talking.

Hawkes Ocean Technologies is now offering their new Deep Flight Super Falcon for sale to private owners.  The duel cockpit, duel winged, and duel tail fins allow the Super Falcon to literally “fly” underwater for up to five hours at speeds up to 6 knots.  Capable of diving to a depth of 1,500 feet, you can do barrel rolls alongside a school of dolphins while exploring deep unchartered territory.

With Deep Flight, Hawkes Ocean Technologies has successfully engineered the required fundamental advance in the basic way submersibles operate, making the leap from “underwater balloons” (sinkers) to underwater flight, an intrinsically safer, simpler and dramatically more efficient means of moving through the water.

The Deep Flight Super Falcon is the newest vehicle in the Deep Flight series of submersibles and was designed specifically for the superyacht market. Advanced comfort, state-of-the-art control systems and various safety features of the Super Falcon are highly attractive to those that can afford the reported $1.3M price tag.

The first client for the Super Falcon is venture capitalist Tom Perkins, for use on his mega yacht the Maltese Falcon.

A little too rich for your blood? Hawkes Ocean Technologies offers The Deep Flight Sub Sea Aviation School, a 3-day course where you can be trained and licensed to fly a Deep Flight winged submersible, with classes starting this summer.

For more information on the Deep Flight Super Falcon and other submersibles, check out Hawkes Ocean Technologies website or download this brochure (PDF)

More Photos:

Photos courtesy of Hawke Ocean Technologies