[Infowarrior] - James Cameron visits Earth's deepest point

[Richard Forno]

atimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-james-cameron-dive-20120326,0,5646449.story

latimes.com

Film director James Cameron visits Earth's deepest point

The journey takes him nearly seven miles to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, where he spends several hours filming before returning to the surface.

Associated Press

March 26, 2012

Honolulu

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— Hollywood director James Cameron completed his journey to Earth's deepest point — exploring his surroundings and, of course, filming them before returning to the ocean's surface.

The director of "Titanic," "Avatar" and other films used a specially designed submarine to dive nearly seven miles to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam.

Cameron returned to the surface of the Pacific Ocean on Monday morning, according to Stephanie Montgomery of the National Geographic Society.

His descent took more than two hours; his return was a "faster-than-expected 70-minute ascent," the society said.

Upon reaching the bottom, Cameron's first words were, "All systems OK," according to a statement.

The scale of the trench is hard to grasp — it's 120 times larger than the Grand Canyon and more than a mile deeper than Mt. Everest is tall.

Cameron made the dive aboard his 12-ton, lime-green sub called "Deepsea Challenger."

"It's really the first time that human eyes have had an opportunity to gaze upon what is a very alien landscape," said Terry Garcia, the National Geographic Society's executive vice president for mission programs, via phone from Pitlochry, Scotland.

Humans have dived to such depths only once before, in 1960. Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh took nearly five hours to reach the bottom and stayed just 20 minutes. They had little to report on what they saw, however, because their submarine kicked up so much sand from the ocean floor.

"He is going to be seeing something that none of us have ever seen before. He is going to be opening new worlds to scientists," Garcia said in the pre-dive interview.

One of the risks of a dive so deep is extreme water pressure. At 6.8 miles below the surface, the pressure is the equivalent of three SUVs sitting on your toe.

The pressure "is in the back of your mind," Cameron told the Associated Press this month, after a 5.1-mile-deep practice run near Papua New Guinea. The submarine would implode in an instant if it leaked, he said.

Although he acknowledged he was a little apprehensive beforehand, Cameron said he wasn't scared or nervous while underwater.

"When you are actually on the dive, you have to trust the engineering was done right," he said.

The film director has been an oceanography enthusiast since childhood and has made 72 deep-sea submersible dives.

Thirty-three of those dives have been to the wreckage of the Titanic, the subject of his 1997 hit film.
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