By Fabienne Faur
Titanic director James Cameron described a “desolate” and “alien” environment on the bottom of the sea after a record-setting solo submarine dive to the deepest point in the world’s oceans.
Mr. Cameron plunged about 11 kilometres down the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, the first one-person mission to the lowest point of the oceans.
“I felt like I — in the space of one day — had gone to another planet and come back,” he said, saying the ocean floor was a “completely featureless, alien world.”
Speaking after resurfacing from the mission, the Canadian filmmaker-explorer described the barren ocean floor as not unlike the surface of the moon. It was a “very lunar, very desolate place. Very isolated,” Mr. Cameron said.
The experience of hurtling down the “yawning chasm” of the ocean in his specially designed submersible, Deepsea Challenger, was like “falling through darkness — that’s something that a robot can’t describe,” he added.
The voyage was the first manned expedition to the trench since 1960 and the culmination of more than seven years of planning.
“Most importantly, though, is the significance of pushing the boundaries of where humans can go, what they can see and how they can interpret it,” he said in a statement.
The journey down to the Challenger Deep valley of the Mariana Trench, which lies southwest of Guam, took two hours and 36 minutes, according to the mission organized with National Geographic.
Mr. Cameron, 57, told reporters in a phone press conference that he was at the bottom of the ocean for a little more than two and a half hours, and had to cut short the planned stay of six hours because of problems with the ocean craft’s hydraulics system.
Being able to make the journey was “the culmination from my perspective of a lifelong dream,” he said, adding he hopes to be able to continue to marry his love of exploring the depths of the sea with his work as a director.
He collected samples for research in marine biology, microbiology, astrobiology, marine geology and geophysics, and captured photographs and 3D moving images.
Mr. Cameron is the first person to make a solo dive to the Pacific Ocean trench.
After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Mr. Cameron’s sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and plucked from the Pacific by a research ship’s crane, organizers said.
National Geographic said Mr. Cameron had reached a depth of 10,898 metres at 7:52 a.m. Monday.
The images he collected will be used to make a 3-D feature film, which is expected to be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.
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