Question: Do you feel danger when you go underwater sometimes?

Jon Copley answered on 21 Jun 2010:

No – the crew in the subs are very professional and superbly trained. So they’re not worried, and that makes you not worried too. Sadly there have been a couple of people who have dived in these kind of minisubs, but that was thirty years ago and people learned a lot from the accidents that did happen. So it’s much safer today – and the sub crews go to the bottom of the ocean every day. It’s just like driving to work for them.

One my first dive they try to play a joke on me, though. When we were on the ocean floor, the sub pilot stood up and unscrewed the hatch (the door in the top of the sub that we climb in and out of). It’s a little game they play with the scientists on their first dive, to see if we freak out by thinking that the hatch might open.

But the hatch is like a big wedge of metal, and all the pressure from the weight of the ocean above is pushing it shut. So no-one could ever be strong enough to open the hatch when you’re on the bottom. I knew that, so I’m pleased to say I didn’t freak out!