The ''Shinkai 2000'' (しんかい) was a crewed research
submersible that could dive up to a depth of 2,000 meters. It was completed in 1981 and until 1991 it had the greatest depth range of any crewed research vehicle in Japan. The ''Shinkai 2000'' was owned and run by the
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
(JAMSTEC) and it was launched from the support vessel ''
Natsushima''.
Two pilots and one researcher operated within a 30 mm thick
High-strength low-alloy steel
High-strength low-alloy steel (HSLA) is a type of alloy steel that provides better mechanical properties or greater resistance to corrosion than carbon steel. HSLA steels vary from other steels in that they are not made to meet a specific chemica ...
pressure hull with an internal diameter of 2.2 meters. Buoyancy was provided by
syntactic foam.
Three
methacrylate resin view ports were arranged at the front and on each side of the vehicle.
The deep diving submersible ''Shinkai 2000'' is
eponym
An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''.
Usage of the word
The term ''epon ...
ous for the genus
Shinkai- polychaete worms of the family
Chrysopetalidae. Bivalves hosting those parasitic polychaetes were collected during Dives 315 and 381 in the Hatsushima cold-seep site in Sagami Bay.
Preserved at
Shin-Enoshima Aquarium, Enoshima Island,
Fujisawa,
Kanagawa
is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-densest at . Its geographic area of makes it fifth-smallest. Kanagaw ...
See also
*
References
External links
*
JAMSTEC Shinkai 2000 page
Deep-submergence vehicles
Research submarines of Japan
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Ships built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
1981 ships
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