James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive

sheena_yanaisheena_yanai Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11426Members
<div align='center'><img src="http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/504/overrides/james-cameron-returns-mariana-trench_50423_600x450.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
The explorer-filmmaker emerges from his sub after returning from Challenger Deep.</div>

At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived under the crushing water pressure of 16,000 pounds per square inch (11,250,000 kilograms per square meter) at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and would soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane. Earlier, the descent to Challenger Deep had taken 2 hours and 36 minutes.

Expedition member Kevin Hand called the timing of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER sub's ascent "perfect."

"Jim came up in what must have been the best weather conditions we've seen, and it looks like there’s a squall on the horizon," said Hand, a NASA astrobiologist and National Geographic emerging explorer.

Before surfacing about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Guam, Cameron spent hours hovering over Challenger Deep's desert-like seafloor and gliding along its cliff walls, the whole time collecting samples and video.

Among the 2.5-story-tall sub's tools are a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a "slurp gun" for sucking up small seacreatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. (See pictures of Cameron's sub.)

Now "the science team is getting ready for the returned samples," said NASA's Hand.

Cameron—best known for creating fictional worlds on film (Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss)—is expected to announce his initial findings later today. After analysis, full results are to be published in a future edition of National Geographic magazine.

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"The Ultimate Test"

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh, who descended to Challenger Deep in 1960, said he was pleased to hear that Cameron had reached the underwater valley safely.

"That was a grand moment, to welcome him to the club," Walsh, said in a telephone interview from the sub-support ship.

"There're only three of us in it, and one of them—late Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard—"is dead. Now it's just Jim and myself."

Expedition physician Joe MacInnis called Cameron’s successful descent today "the ultimate test of a man and his machine."

After breaching the ocean surface, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER was first spotted by a helicopter owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, a longtime Cameron friend. Allen was on the scene for the historic dive and posted live updates of the event on Twitter from aboard his yacht, the Octopus, which is providing backup support for the mission.

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Science in Three Dimensions

Throughout the Mariana Trench dive, 3-D video cameras were kept whirring, and not just for the benefit of future audiences of planned documentaries.

"There is scientific value in getting stereo images because ... you can determine the scale and distance of objects from stereo pairs that you can't from 2-D images," Cameron told National Geographic News before the dive.

But "it's not just the video. The sub's lighting of deepwater scenes—mainly by an 8-foot (2.5-meter) tower of LEDs—is "so, so beautiful," said Doug Bartlett, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

"It's unlike anything that you'll have seen from other subs or other remotely operated vehicles," said Bartlett, chief scientist for the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

Medical, Psychological Rigors

As the 57-year-old explorer emerged from the sub's coffin—tight 43-inch-wide (109-centimeter-wide) cockpit, a medical team stood at the ready.

But if recent test dives—including one to more than five miles (eight kilometers meters) down—are any indication, Cameron should be physically fine, despite having been unable to extend his arms and legs for hours, expedition physician Joe MacInnis told National Geographic News before the dive.

"Jim is going to be a little bit stiff and sore from the cramped position, but he's in really good shape for his age, so I don't expect any problems at all," said MacInnis, a long-time Cameron friend.

In addition, the sub's "pilot sphere" has a handlebar, which Cameron could use to pull himself occasionally up during the dive. "Usually, shifting position is all that's required to buy yourself another few hours," he said.

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Because Cameron had prepared extensively for the dive, he should be in good psychological health, said Walter Sipes, an aeronautics psychologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"He's got prior experience doing this, not just in the simulator but also training dives ... and he's an adventurer, so I really don't think they'll have any issues to worry about," said Sipes, who is not part of the expedition.

Still, if Cameron plans to conduct more dives—which the team has indicated he will—Sipes recommends he get plenty of rest in between or risk mental fatigue.

"When you start to get fatigued, you start making mistakes," he added. "And since he's down there solo, he can't afford that. He's a [potential] single-point failure."

It should be at least a few weeks before any further DEEPSEA CHALLENGE dives, as the director's next breakneck mission will take him from the middle of the Pacific to London, where he's due at a premiere of his Titanic 3-D Wednesday.

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"A Turning Point"

By returning humans to the so-called hadal zone—the ocean's deepest level, below 20,000 feet (6,000 meters)—the Challenger Deep expedition may represent a renaissance in deep-sea exploration.

While remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, are much less expensive than manned subs, "the critical thing is to be able to take the human mind down into that environment," expedition member Patricia Fryer said, "to be able to turn your head and look around to see what the relationships are between organisms in a community and to see how they're behaving—to turn off all the lights and just sit there and watch and not frighten the animals, so that they behave normally.

"That is almost impossible to do with an ROV," said Fryer, a marine geologist at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics & Planetology.

Andy Bowen, project manager and principal developer of the Nereus, an ROV that explored Challenger Deep in 2009, said a manned mission also has the potential to inspire public imagination in a way a robot can't.

"It's difficult to anthropomorphize machines in a way that engages everyone's imagination—not in the same way that having boots on the ground, so to speak, can do," said Bowen, who's not an expedition member.

Biological oceanographer Lisa Levin, also at Scripps, said that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE program's potential for generating public interest in deep-ocean science is as important as any new species Cameron might have discovered.

"I consider Cameron to be doing for the trenches what Jacques Cousteau did for the ocean many decades ago," said Levin, who's part of the team but did not participate in the seagoing expedition.

At a time of fast-shrinking funds for undersea research, "what scientists need is the public support to be able to continue exploration and research of the deep ocean," Levin said.

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Perhaps referring to his friend's most recent movie, expedition physician MacInnis called Cameron a real-world "avatar."

"He's down there on behalf of everybody else on this planet," he said. "There are seven billion people who can’t go, and he can. And he’s aware of that."

For his part, Cameron seems sure that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER will be exploring the depths for a long time to come. In fact, he's so confident in his star vehicle, he started mulling sequels even before today's trench dive.

Phase two might include adding a thin fiber-optic tether to the ship, which "would allow science observers at the surface to see the images in real time," said Cameron, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence.

"And phase three might be taking this vehicle and creating a second-generation vehicle."

DEEPSEA CHALLENGE, then, may be anything but a one-hit wonder. To expedition chief scientist Bartlett, the Mariana Trench dive could "represent a turning point in how we approach ocean science.

"I absolutely think that what you're seeing is the start of a program, not just one grand expedition."

Comments

  • TemphageTemphage Join Date: 2009-10-28 Member: 69158Members
    Hmm. I'm really curious about the footage... with enough lights I imagine you could see some impressive things at least geography-wise, but most of the focus is on the sub and the trip, not on just how much he'll even be able to see. My mind pictures a massive fissure in the earth and sheer rock faces, but in reality I just picture inky blackness with a few feet of whitish/brown sea floor. I wish they'd at least release a picture for the world to admire - the last guys down there weren't able to even do that, on account of the massive level of silt that they stirred up when they reached the bottom.
  • That_Annoying_KidThat_Annoying_Kid Sire of Titles Join Date: 2003-03-01 Member: 14175Members, Constellation
    good to know the yacht is there for backup support
  • NeonSpyderNeonSpyder &quot;Das est NTLDR?&quot; Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17913Members
  • TemphageTemphage Join Date: 2009-10-28 Member: 69158Members
    Also, in b4 Avatar-bashing.
  • XythXyth Avatar Join Date: 2003-11-04 Member: 22312Members
    You convienently forgot to mention the subs robotic arm was also rocking <a href="http://blog.perpetuelle.com/dive-watches/rolex-deepsea-challenge-reaches-deepest-point-on-earth/" target="_blank">the finest time keeping device money can buy</a>
  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    What are you, a Rolex adbot?
  • sheena_yanaisheena_yanai Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11426Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1918253:date=Mar 27 2012, 05:50 AM:name=Xyth)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Xyth @ Mar 27 2012, 05:50 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1918253"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You convienently forgot to mention the subs robotic arm was also rocking <a href="http://blog.perpetuelle.com/dive-watches/rolex-deepsea-challenge-reaches-deepest-point-on-earth/" target="_blank">the finest time keeping device money can buy</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    oh thats crazy... im curious if the watch made it..

    <div align='center'><img src="http://perpetuelle.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/deepsea-challenge-watch-on-deepsea-challenger-2.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></div>
  • TemphageTemphage Join Date: 2009-10-28 Member: 69158Members
    edited March 2012
    Now what the christ is the point of that? In case I drop my watch through the atmosphere of Venus?
  • XythXyth Avatar Join Date: 2003-11-04 Member: 22312Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1918277:date=Mar 26 2012, 05:47 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (lolfighter @ Mar 26 2012, 05:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1918277"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What are you, a Rolex adbot?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    What, no, that's.... preposterous.
    <span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>I'm just trying to share the elegantly stylish yet tough-as-16000psi-rocks construction of the newest addition to the Rolex® Family: The DEEPSEA CHALLENGE. Don't adorn you $500K robotic arm with just any superfluous timekeeping device, Rolex® is the leader in the emerging market of robot jewelry.</span>
  • [WHO]Them[WHO]Them You can call me Dave Join Date: 2002-12-11 Member: 10593Members, Constellation
    Hey, I'm sure they paid some nontrivial amount of money for it to be on there. And capitalism funding science is something I can endorse.
  • That_Annoying_KidThat_Annoying_Kid Sire of Titles Join Date: 2003-03-01 Member: 14175Members, Constellation
    dollars to dimes the arm was built in my local municipality!


    Also I'm assuming the rolex worked when it surfaced? Awesome if it works
  • LV426-ColonistLV426-Colonist Space Jockey Join Date: 2011-08-05 Member: 114269Members, Constellation
    James Cameron - the Abyss 2.
  • sheena_yanaisheena_yanai Join Date: 2002-12-23 Member: 11426Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1918299:date=Mar 27 2012, 08:56 AM:name=[WHO]Them)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE ([WHO]Them @ Mar 27 2012, 08:56 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1918299"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
    Hey, I'm sure they paid some nontrivial amount of money for it to be on there. And capitalism funding science is something I can endorse.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    the rolex society owns national geographic, and they payed for the trip, so...
  • [WHO]Them[WHO]Them You can call me Dave Join Date: 2002-12-11 Member: 10593Members, Constellation
    <!--quoteo(post=1918443:date=Mar 26 2012, 09:57 PM:name=sheena_yanai)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (sheena_yanai @ Mar 26 2012, 09:57 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1918443"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->the rolex society owns national geographic, and they payed for the trip, so...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

    I did not know that. I'm not sure whether to feel stupid or marginally insightful right now.
  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    <!--quoteo(post=1918281:date=Mar 26 2012, 11:54 PM:name=Temphage)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Temphage @ Mar 26 2012, 11:54 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1918281"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Now what the christ is the point of that? In case I drop my watch through the atmosphere of Venus?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    In case you drop your watch into the Mariana trench. Never mind that you can buy a new watch for the cost of a dive to retrieve it. And then also a yacht and a mansion. And a second yacht.
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