February 29th, 2012
10:48 AM ET
Filmmaker James Cameron aims to explore ocean's deepest parts
From CNN's Adam Reiss
Editor's note: Watch CNN TV this week for exclusive coverage of James Cameron's final test dives before his attempt to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Oscar winning director James Cameron, known for breaking box office records, is now aiming for underwater dominance.
The filmmaker, who's better known for his blockbuster hits such as "Titanic," is taking the dive of his life into the deepest waters in the world. He's in a race with two other men - billionaire businessman and adventurer Richard Branson and an experienced submarine pilot - to reach the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the world's oceans. It's part of the Mariana Trench near Guam in the western Pacific.
At more than 10,900 meters (35,800 feet), the Mariana Trench is deeper than Mount Everest is tall, and has had only two previous human visitors. In 1960, U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and the late Swiss explorer Jacques Piccard descended into the deep in the bathyscaphe Trieste.
Scientists hope that Challenger Deep will provide insight into many unfamiliar life in the depths of the ocean. It is estimated that more than 750,000 marine species have not been formally described in scientific literature over the centuries, triple the number of those that have been. The figures exclude microbes, of which a 2010 census estimates there are up to 1 billion kinds.
Cameron and his team have secretly planned and plotted for five years to send the second manned vessel into the chasm. He has been conducting test deep sea dives inside his one-man submersible for several weeks.
Cameron has released little information so far about his vessel, which was built in Australia.
It's not the first adventure for Cameron, who has been a lifetime explorer of the sea - a passion that he brought to the screen in 1989 with his undersea adventure, "The Abyss," in which oceanographers find alien life at the unexplored depths of the ocean. His interest in the ocean also influenced the making of his two highest grossing movies, "Titanic" (1997) and "Avatar" (2009). In addition to his dive to the Titanic wreck, Cameron's exquisite creatures on the planet Pandora in "Avatar" were inspired by real-life sea creatures seen during his diving ventures.
He says he plans to spend six hours in the pitch-black waters on the ocean floor using remote arms to collect samples for research in marine biology, microbiology, astrobiology, marine geology and geophysics. His vehicle is decked out with advanced technology including a 3-D camera that he hopes will capture rare forms of sea life so he can turn his deep dive adventure into a movie.
Cameron's adventure is part of a competition for underwater dominance with adventure-loving Richard Branson.
The billionaire announced plans last year to explore the deepest part of the ocean with his airplane-shaped Virgin Oceanic sub.
"I am planning to go down in the Puerto Rican trench. It goes down further than Everest is high ... about 28,000 feet," Branson said last year. "There have been about 400 people who have been into space but pretty well nobody has been down and explored the big trenches in the oceans."
Patrick Lahey, the president of a small Central Florida company by the name of Triton Submarines, is also competing to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench. He is described on his company's website as "the most experienced civil sub pilot active in the world today."
The first person to reach Challenger Deep will be awarded $10 million by the X-Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to inspire and encourage radical breakthroughs that will benefit humanity.
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/29/filmmaker-james-cameron-aims-to-explore-oceans-deepest-parts/?hpt=hp_c1
0 comments:
Post a Comment