James Cameron set out to break the record for the world’s deepest dive into the ocean, where Cameron would go solo in a submarine, and submerge into the world’s deepest point in what is called the “Mariana Trench”.
The Mariana Trench is said to be about 200 miles southwest of the Pacific island of Guam. Cameron had previously spent time in the area before, filming and exploring… which inspired him to build a special submarine that could take Cameron almost 7 miles deep into the Trench.
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The “Deepsea Challenger”, the submarine that Cameron has been experimenting in, was built by Cameron and his team, and was tested earlier this month where Cameron took 5.1 mile-deep practice run near Papua New Guinea. He and his team assumed that the 12-ton vessel would work fine under pressure when put deeper in the Mariana Trench, as long as the vessel doesn’t get a leak. If the sub did get a leak, Cameron says the sub ‘would implode’.
Cameron’s big day finally came on Sunday March, 25, 2012, where he would submerge into the Mariana Trench on Sunday night.
Cameron got in his ‘room for only one’ Deepsea Challenger sub, closed the hatch, and began his long journey of 6.8 miles to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Cameron finally made it to the bottom, which took him two hours and 36 minutes. He reached a depth of 35,756 feet! He planned on staying 6 hours on the bottom, but he only ended up staying about three hours before he started his return back up. It took him only 70 minutes to get back.
While Cameron was on his deep sea expedition, he collected samples for research in marine biology, microbiology, astrobiology, marine geology and geophysics. According to the Associated Press, the sub’s tools to collect the samples were ‘a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a “slurp gun” for sucking up small sea creatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges’.
Associated Press also reports that “Cameron also captured still photographs and video, but there was no immediate word on when the images will be released. The Geographic said the expedition is being chronicled for a 3-D feature film for theatrical release and subsequent TV broadcast.”
Of course we’ll let you know when we get the photos and video that surface from his trip!