marianas trench – Seabed Habitats

James Cameron Breaks Solo Dive Record – In a state-of-the-art submersible, National Geographic explorer-in-residence and filmmaker James Cameron reached the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, breaking a world record for the deepest solo dive. James Cameron mentions it as more a desert like place with very fine sediments and small, white, alien-like animals.

Footage from Earth’s deepest place is available on this link on the BBC website and also on the post entitled “James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge: a scientific milestone or rich guy’s junket?”on Deep Sea News blog which discusses the significance of the dive.

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 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.

via National Geographic

A big congratulations to James Cameron and his team.

James Cameron: “It’s a heck of a ride, you’re just screaming down and screaming back up”