James Cameron revealed what he saw when he reached the deepest point of the ocean some 35,787 feet underwater.
That’s right; not only has Cameron helmed some of the biggest movies of our generation – including Titanic and the Avatar franchise – but he’s also a world-record-breaking explorer.
The celebrated director, now 70, embarked on a solo expedition back in 2012 to fulfil his ‘boyhood dream’.
The thought of being alone at the deepest point of the ocean certainly fills me with dread, but Cameron dedicated $10 million and several years to building his Deepsea Challenger submersible.
On March 26, 2012, he took the terrifying plunge into the Pacific Ocean and down the seven-mile-deep Mariana Trench, located near Guam.
James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger (National Geographic)
It took Cameron almost three hours to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, where he recorded a maximum depth of 35,787 feet (10,908 metres).
For context, that’s more than twice the depth of the Titanic wreckage which is 12,500 feet deep (3,800 metres).
Cameron successfully made 33 visits to the site of the shipwreck between 1995 and 2005.
In Mariana’s Trench, meanwhile, Cameron spent around four hours exploring the ocean’s floor, capturing video footage along the way.
Naturally, the filmmaker turned this into a documentary, titled James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge 3D, which is available to stream for free now via Plex.
He told BBC News of the experience: “It was absolutely the most remote, isolated place on the planet. I really feel like in one day I’ve been to another planet and come back.”
He described the depths of the ocean as ‘a sterile, almost desert-like place’.
Elsewhere, he told NPR journalist Melissa Block: “It’s very lunar. You don’t expect a profusion of life, like you might see at, let’s say, a hydrothermal vent community.”
Cameron also took equipment to retrieve sediment samples from silt found at the great depths.
“We did find 68 new species, most of them bacteria, but some small invertebrates, as well, that were brought back,” he told Block.
James Cameron made history with his Deepsea Challenger mission in 2012 (National Geographic)
Cameron’s feat was the second-ever manned trip to the Mariana Trench seafloor since US Navy submersible Trieste, piloted by Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, in 1960.
Another 20 people have reached Challenger Deep since, including, in 2021, OceanGate Titan submersible victim Hamish Harding.
He and four others – OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, and Paul-Henry Nargeolet – died on June 18 2023 en route to the Titanic wreckage when the Titan sub imploded at around 10,977 foot deep.
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Topics: Earth, Film and TV, James Cameron, Nature, Titanic
Ellie Kemp
James Cameron reveals he heard ‘something you never want to hear’ during near-disaster Titanic dive
Cameron has visited the Titanic wreckage a whopping 33 times
Titanic director James Cameron has recalled the terrifying experience he had on a submersible while working on the movie way back in 1995.
Cameron has visited the Titanic wreckage a whopping 33 times, but it was during one trip in the nineties that he said he almost lost his life.
The director has spoken openly about his visits to the wreckage, and even raised concerns to OceanGate following the catastrophic Titan sub disaster in 2023.
The wreckage of the Titanic remains on the ocean floor over a century on.(Getty Stock Photo)
Five people sadly died when the submersible imploded during a tourism visit to the wreckage of the Titanic in June last year.
Three of the passengers – father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, and British billionaire Hamish Harding – had paid $250,000 to be part of the expedition down to the wreck of the Titanic, over two miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
The other two onboard were OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush, and French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Days after the sub was reported missing, floating debris was found in the water that was later confirmed to have come from the sub, suggesting a ‘catastrophic implosion’ that would have destroyed the vessel had taken place and resulted in the death of all five on board.
Following the disaster, Cameron said he felt there were parallels between the Titan disaster and the sinking of the Titanic.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field,” he said.
“I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through.
“I think [it] is absolutely critical to really get the take-home message from our effort here is [that] deep submergence diving is a mature art.”
Cameron himself was actually involved in a life-threatening trip to the wreckage himself back in 1995.
According to Radio Canada, Cameron was on his third dive with pilot Dr. Anatoly Sagalevich, when a sandstorm surrounding the Titanic grounded their vessel.
“Anatoly said, ‘Oh, no,’ something you never want to hear a pilot say, and we locked eyes for a second,” Cameron said, in 2009 biography, The Futurist, by Rebecca Keegan.
Cameron and the crew were caught in a sandstorm while diving down to the wreck of the Titanic. (Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
The sub was losing power, so the crew tried to travel back to the surface twice, but were pushed down by currents.
Eventually, on the third try, they managed to distance themselves far enough away from the sandstorm to travel back to the surface.
More recently, Cameron has spoken out about claims that he could be working on a movie about the Titan disaster.
He said there is no chance of him working on any kind of film about the sub, and there never was.
Taking to X, Cameron said: “I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now. I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”
