Director of Titanic goes to the bottom
Washington – Titanic director James Cameron has reached the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean in his solo submarine, mission partner the National Geographic says.
The explorer and film-maker reached a depth of 10,898 metres at 7:52am yesterday, local time, in the Mariana Trench in his specially designed submersible, National Geographic said.
Cameron’s first words on reaching the bottom of the so-called Challenger Deep were ‘‘All systems OK’’, a mission statement reported.
He then tweeted: ‘‘Just arrived at the ocean’s deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can’t wait to share what I’m seeing w/ you.’’
He planned to spend up to six hours on the Pacific Ocean sea floor, collecting samples for scientific research and taking still photographs and moving images.
His goal is to be the first human to visit the ocean’s deepest point in more than 50 years, and to bring back data and specimens.
He was expected to take threedimensional (3D) images that could help scientists better understand the unexplored part of the earth.
The submersible that Cameron designed, a ‘‘vertical torpedo’’ of sorts, already successfully completed an unpiloted dive on Friday.
The Canadian film-maker left the tiny Pacific atoll of Ulithi on Saturday for the mission some 11km down in the Pacific Ocean, the scientific institution said.
He planned to film his journey with several 3D high-definition cameras and a 2.4-metre-tall array of light-emitting diode lights.
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.
Because of its extreme depth, the Mariana Trench is in perpetual darkness and the temperature is just a few degrees above freezing, team members say.
The water pressure at the bottom of the trench is a crushing 7.26 tonnes per square inch or about a thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. Pressure increases with depth.
Cameron, 57, has been running several kilometres a day, practising yoga to increase his flexibility for the dive in the sub’s cramped quarters and studying deep-ocean science, physician Joe Macinnis told National Geographic News.
Macinnis is a member of the Deepsea Challenge project, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex.
Cameron already has 72 dives under his belt, including 12 to film Titanic.
The Mariana Trench is in the western Pacific east of the Philippines and some 200km east of the Mariana Islands. The crescentshaped scar in the Earth’s crust measures more than 2550km long and 69km wide on average.