Cameron to dive to ocean’s deepest point
But that’s nothing. In the coming weeks he says he plans to descend to the deepest place on Earth.
Cameron is aiming to plunge to the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean, 200 miles southwest of Guam. It’s 6.8 miles (11km) deep.
Humans have been there only once before when a two-man US Navy team went for just 20 minutes in 1960. It’s so deep there that the pressure is the equivalent of three SUVs parked on your toe.
The Avatar and Titanic filmmaker said he wasn’t frightened when he dove nearly that far in a practice run that lasted three and a half hours on the bottom.
“Certainly not nervous or scared during the dive,” Cameron said. “You tend to be a little apprehensive ahead of the dive about what could go wrong. When you are actually on the dive you have to trust the engineering was done right.”
Later, he acknowledged that the bone-crushing pressure at five miles and seven miles deep “is in the back of your mind”.
Cameron is using a one-man, 12-tonne lime green sub that he helped design called Deepsea Challenger. He is partnering with the National Geographic Society, where he is an explorer-in-residence.
“The deep trenches are the last unexplored frontier on our planet, with scientific riches enough to fill a hundred years of exploration,” Cameron said.
Cameron, who has been an oceanography enthusiast since childhood, has made 72 deep-sea submersible dives, including 33 to the Titanic, the subject of his 1997 blockbuster. He will try the dive to return with specimens and images.
Cameron would seek to accomplish his feat aboard a submersible “as futuristic as anything in his movies”, the National Geographic scientific institution said.
National Geographic said the mission would “expand our knowledge and understanding of these largely unknown parts of the planet”.
Cameron acknowledged some concerns ahead of his journey.
“When you’re making a movie, everybody’s read the script and they know what’s going to happen next. When you’re on an expedition, nature hasn’t read the script, the ocean hasn’t read the script, and no one knows what’s going to happen next.”
In 1960, a two-person crew aboard the US Navy submersible Trieste — the only humans to have reached Challenger Deep — spent just 20 minutes on the bottom, but their view was obscured by silt stirred up when they landed.
The Cameron-designed sub, however, is expected to allow the director to spend around six hours on the seafloor during which he plans to collect samples and film his journey with several 3-D, high-definition cameras and an 8ft tall array of LED lights.
The Deepsea Challenger, which can sink upright, is 26ft tall and took eight years to build. It uses specially designed foam to allow the new sub to weigh just 12 tonnes, about 12 times lighter than Trieste.
Cameron, 57, said he hopes his expedition will reveal more about ocean trenches, such as whether fish can live so deep in the sea. But he will be crammed in to a 43-inch-wide steel “pilot sphere” on his way down in which he won’t be able to extend his arms or legs. “It’s like a clown car in there,” Cameron said.
“You barely have room to get in, and then they hand you another 50 pounds [23 kilogrammes] of equipment.”
Because of the extreme depth of Challenger Deep, it is cloaked in perpetual darkness and surrounded with near-freezing waters.
“The deep trenches are the last unexplored frontier on our planet,” National Geographic said.
On the sea floor, Cameron’s sub will experience water pressures approaching 16,000 pounds per square inch (11,250,000kg per square metre).
Cameron is not alone in seeking to beat the diving record. British magnate Richard Branson has built a two-seater sub he says can survive a Challenger Deep descent. And last year, the Triton submersible company unveiled the Triton 36000/3 model, which would reportedly allow a three-person crew to make the journey.
* You can follow Cameron’s expedition at deepseachallenge.com.
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