Explorer finds plastic bag and sweet wrappers seven miles under the ocean in deepest ever dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench

AN explorer who broke the record for the deepest-ever dive found a plastic bag and sweet wrappers on the seabed.

Victor Vescovo’s dive is the third time people have explored the Mariana Trench which is located in the Pacific Ocean.

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Mr Vescovo’s descent reached 35,849ft below sea level - beating the last record by 36ft.

He explored the seabed for four hours in a specially designed submarine built to withstand the pressure of deep sea diving.

Mr Vescovo, a retired naval officer who co-founded a private equity firm, said: “It is almost indescribable how excited all of us are about achieving what we just did.

“This submarine and its mother ship, along with its extraordinarily talented expedition team, took marine technology to a ridiculously higher new level by diving - rapidly and repeatedly - into the deepest, harshest, area of the ocean.”

Film director James Cameron made a solo dive in 2012 and in 1960 a US Navy lieutenant and a Swiss engineer explored the Mariana Trench for the first time.

The Mariana Trench - 200km east of the Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean - is the deepest natural trench in the world.

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If it was inverted it would stand 7,035 feet taller than the peak of Mount Everest.

Mr Vescovo, 53, from Dallas, Texas, will now test the creatures they collected to find out if they contain microplastics.

Millions of tonnes of plastic waste is enter the ocean each year but very little is known about where it all ends up.

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