On March 26, filmmaker and explorer James Cameron climbed into a custom-built submersible called the Deep Sea Challenger and plunged nearly 36,000 feet (10,898 meters) to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
He became the only individual to reach the deepest part of the ocean since 1960.
The expedition, documented by National Geographic as James Cameron:Voyage to the Bottom of the Earth (which was recently premiered), follows his every move before, during and after the dive.
We caught up with the director of Avatar, who opened up about the experience.
As the only person having completed the dive in a solo vehicle and the first since 1960 to reach Challenger Deep in a manned submersible, describe the feeling?
It’s incredible.With a movie, you can always do another take, but the ocean hasn’t read your script; it will do what it wants. All the seven billion people on the planet can’t go to places like these.But if one person goes and they bring back the story, then everybody goes in spirit.What I think this has done is it shines a spotlight on the fact that there’s still a vast frontier here on planet Earth that’s unexplored.
What went into the preparation and designing of the submersible?
We were going to be fighting against the absolute limits of material science.
Titanium will be close to yielding at these pressures. This seemed like a very daunting thing and we didn’t know if we could do it.
The design of the submersible called for things that didn’t exist. Everything had to be adapted or invented to ensure I survive. It took seven years to go seven miles.From seven miles down, back to the surface was 70 minutes. The sub was a rocket at that point and it felt like a train car.That’s the fastest I’d ever moved vertically underwater.
Your first thought on reaching the ocean’s deepest point?
I just sat there and thought, ‘Here I am’. Seven years and all that engineering and all that work, and it happened. It almost looked like snowfields.The first thing I had to do was get a sample. So, I deployed the science door, deployed the arm, got it out, pushed the core tube down. It looked like I got a good amount, brought it back up. And just about that time my wife Suzy called. She had commandeered the communication system. So, here I am, in the most remote place on planet earth where I feel like the most solitary human being on the planet, completely cut off from humanity, no chance of rescue, in a place that no human eyes have seen, and my wife calls, which of course was very sweet, but let that be a lesson to all men.
How do such death-defying expeditions help you push the envelope with regard to other projects?
Part of exploration is storytelling. In addition to taking the science, data, the samples, you’ve got to take pictures, then you have to come back and tell the story. It’s not just the science story, but the story of what it felt like to go down there and to bear witness with your own eyes to something that nobody had ever seen before.That’s the true spirit of exploration.
As a National Geographic explorer, what is your next target?
This is a continuous lifelong dream. Most people know me as a filmmaker but my passion is the ocean and its exploration.