James Cameron’s Solo Submarine Dive

Hollywood director James Cameron has successfully completed a solo mini-submarine dive in a vertical ‘torpedo’ of his own design. For the past seven years, Cameron, who is better known for creating the epic blockbusters Avatar and Titanic, has been working in secret with a team in Australia to design and build a 12-tonne, 12 metre-long sub called ‘Deepsea Challenger’.

The National Geographic Society, who sponsored the expedition, reported Cameron’s record-breaking descent to the deepest point in the ocean - over 10 kilometres down into the Mariana Trench, southwest of the Pacific island Guam. He returned to the surface after less than three hours under water.

The director has been fascinated by oceanography since he was young, and he undertook 33 deep-sea dives to the wreck of the Titanic during the making of his 1997 film. Cameron planned to film what he could see during his solo dive to later share with the world in 3D.

In preparation for the expedition, Cameron had researched submersible technology to find the best possible way to explore the seabed, and had practiced yoga in order to endure the mission in the one-person vessel. Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and US navy captain Don Welsh are the only two other men to have reached the same depth, in the same place, in 1960. Their visibility was poor due to the amount of sand kicked from the ocean floor.