Cameron: Earth’s deepest spot desolate, foreboding

Film­maker and National Geo­graphic Explorer-in-Residence James Cameron emerges from the Deepsea Chal­lenger sub­mersible after his suc­cess­ful solo dive to the Mar­i­ana Trench, the deep­est part of the ocean, Mon­day. (Cour­tesy | Mark Theis­sen, National Geographic)

SETH BORENSTEIN

AP Sci­ence Writer

WASHINGTON — The last fron­tier on Earth is out-of-this-world, des­o­late, fore­bod­ing, and moon-like, James Cameron said after div­ing to the deep­est part of the ocean.

And he loved it.

Cameron, who knows a lit­tle about alien worlds hav­ing made the movie “Avatar,” said when he got to this strange cold, dark place 7 miles below the west­ern Pacific Ocean that only two other men have been to, there was one thing he promised to him­self: He wanted to drink in how unusual it is.

He didn’t do that when he first dove to the watery grave of the Titanic, and Apollo astro­nauts have said they never had time to savor where they were.

“There had to be a moment where I just stopped, and took it in, and said, ‘This is where I am; I’m at the bot­tom of the ocean, the deep­est place on Earth. What does that mean?’” Cameron told reporters dur­ing a Mon­day con­fer­ence call after spend­ing three hours at the bot­tom of the Mar­i­ana Trench, nearly 7 miles down.

“I just sat there look­ing out the win­dow, look­ing at this bar­ren, des­o­late lunar plain, appre­ci­at­ing,” Cameron said.

He also real­ized how alone he was, with that much water above him.

“It’s really the sense of iso­la­tion, more than any­thing, real­iz­ing how tiny you are down in this big vast black unknown and unex­plored place,” Cameron said.

Cameron said he had hoped to see some strange deep sea mon­ster like a crea­ture that would excite the sto­ry­teller in him and seem like out of his movies, but he didn’t.

He didn’t see tracks of ani­mals on the sea floor as he did when he dove more than 5 miles deep weeks ago. All he saw were vora­cious shrimp-like crit­ters that weren’t big­ger than an inch.

But that was OK, he said, it was all about explo­ration, sci­ence and dis­cov­ery. He is the only per­son to dive there solo, using a sub he helped design. He is the first per­son to reach that depth — 35,576 feet — since it was ini­tially explored in 1960.

He spent more than three hours at the bot­tom, longer than the 20 min­utes Don Walsh and Jacques Pic­card spent in the only other visit 52 years ago. But it was less than the six hours he had hoped. He said he would return.

“I see this as the begin­ning,” Cameron said. “It’s not a one-time deal and then mov­ing on. This is the begin­ning of open­ing up this new frontier.”

“To me, the story is in the peo­ple in their quest and curios­ity and their attempt to under­stand,” Cameron said.

He spent time film­ing the Mar­i­ana Trench, which is about 200 miles south­west of the Pacific island of Guam. The trip down to the deep­est point took two hours and 36 min­utes, start­ing Sun­day after­noon U.S. East Coast time.

His return aboard his 12-ton, lime-green sub called Deepsea Chal­lenger was a “faster-than-expected 70-minute ascent,” accord­ing to National Geo­graphic, which spon­sored the expe­di­tion. Cameron is a National Geo­graphic explorer-in-residence.

The only thing that went wrong was the hydraulics on the sys­tem to col­lect rocks and crit­ters to bring them back to land. Just as he was about to col­lect his first sam­ple, a leak in the hydraulic fluid sprayed into the water and he couldn’t bring any­thing back.

When Cameron climbed into his sub, it was warm because it was near the equa­tor and his cramped vehi­cle — his head hit one end and his feet the other — was toasty because of the heat given off by elec­tron­ics. It felt “like a sauna” with tem­per­a­tures of more than 100 degrees Fahren­heit, he said.

But as he plunged into the deep, the tem­per­a­ture out­side the sub dropped to around 36 degrees, he said.

The pres­sure on the sub was immense — com­pa­ra­ble to three SUVs rest­ing on a toe. The super-strong sub shrank three inches under that pres­sure, Cameron said.

“It’s a very weird envi­ron­ment,” Cameron said. “I can’t say it’s very com­fort­able. And you can’t stretch out.”

Posted by AP News on Mar 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.