A retired naval officer Victor Vescovo said he made the unsettling discovery nearly 6.8 miles to a point in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, where he saw angular metal or plastic objects, one with some writing on it.
The first deep dive into the Mariana Trench was in the year 1960, when U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard ventured into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
Then years later, in 2012, movie director James Cameron made a solo trip into the Mariana Trench.
Vescovo said in an interview that it was very disappointing to see obvious human contamination of the deepest point in the ocean.
His team reportedly believes that they discovered four new prawn-like species in total. They also saw a spoon worm, a pink snailfish, and colored rocky outcrops, all inhabitants of the deep sea.
However, the most alarming of all discoveries was to find human led pollution at the deepest point in the Pacific.
Details of the voyage, made on May 1, were released for the first time on Monday.
Vescovo, a 53-year-old financier with a naval background, told CNN that his journey to the depths was about testing the limits of human endeavour as much as scientific discovery.
"I criss-crossed all over the bottom looking for different wildlife, potentially unique geological formations or rocks, man-made objects, and yes, trying to see if there was an even deeper location than where the Trieste went all the way back in 1960," Vescovo said.
Discoveries in the Challenge Deep included "vibrantly colourful" rocky outcrops that could be chemical deposits, prawn-like supergiant amphopods, and bottom-dwelling Holothurians, or sea cucumbers.
The team of the Five Deeps Expedition that Vescovo's voyage was a part of, said its scientists were going to perform tests on the creatures found to determine the percentage of plastics found in them.