James Cameron made headlines recently for his deep sea dive to the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth. Using a one-man submarine, Cameron descended 11,000 meters under the ocean using a one-man submarine called the Challenger Deep.
The expedition’s documentary, James Cameron: Voyage to the Bottom of the Earth , is set to debut on Sunday night on the National Geographic channel. The documentary includes an extended interview with Cameron, and its speedy release to the public is thanks to miracle editing by the film crew.
The documentary follows Cameron before, during, and after the dive. It also briefly mentions the disappointment that Cameron felt because of the limited amount of data he was able to collect.
He anticipated spending hours at the bottom of the sea floor, but because of a leak in the submarine, he was forced to surface early. In the process, he was only able to collect 50 milliliters of seafloor sediment from only one location.
This is a huge amount from the microbiological point of view, however, it is far less than they anticipated, and in no way allows for a good comparison for life in the Mariana Trench.
In an intimate interview, Cameron recalls of the historic descent, stating:
“I was watching the numbers going deeper. The sub slows down as you get to the target depth. There is a long moment of getting to think about it. Then you have to get busy. You have less than a thousand feet from the bottom, you fine-tune the ballast, adjust the camera, turn up the spotlight. As the altimeter counted, I saw the glow of the bottom!”
James Cameron, when speaking about the dive’s co-sponsor the National Geographic Society with Rolex, he stated:
“I couldn’t think of a better partner. National Geographic as an organization has always stood for the spirit of exploration. It’s what the magazine and the channel has been famous for, coming back from the boundary of human exploration. It’s a legacy of promoting exploration and keeping people excited about something new.”
Check out more information about James Cameron’s deep sea dive here:
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