I have always been fascinated by the ocean. I remember seeing a film a few years ago of the one and only exploration of the Mariana Trench by explorers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in 1960. It took them five hours in their submersible the Trieste to descend the seven miles down to the trench. Unmanned submersibles have gone down since then, but no people. Until today.
James Cameron, the famous movie director of Titanic, The Abyss, and Avatar, just completed the first manned dive in over 50 years. It was an amazingly successful dive and scientists are already working on the data. The dive down to almost three hours and the ascent took a little more than seven. Cameron was able to spend hours in a cramped torpedo shaped sub and operate the machines, take photos, etc.
Cameron, in the submersible Deepsea Challenge that he helped design, was able to go to one of the most hostile places on the earth. The sub was fitted all the state of the art technology necessary to gather sediment, small animals, gauges to measure all kinds of things, as well as high tech 3D cameras.
I can’t imagine what it looks like down there. Cameron is doing a film about the experience for National Geographic. I am so excited about it. It is almost certain that more than one new species of fish, worm, or other life form will be identified.
This expedition is the first of several that are planned. Entrepreneur/adventurer Richard Branson has one planned, and Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO also plan to go down.
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