HAWAII: Student becomes first Pacific Islander to visit deepest part of the ocean
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Twelve people have been to the moon, but until 2019, only three people had been to the deepest part of the ocean: Challenger Deep, a trench off the Mariana Islands that lies nearly 11 kilometers below the surface of the western Pacific Ocean. Recently, Nicole Yamase became the first Pacific Islander to visit it. A student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a citizen of the Federated States of Micronesia, Yamase became interested in climate change in high school and realized that she wanted to study conservation and the environment.