James Cameron Shares Details Of Voyage To Mariana Trench

James Cameron traveled 7 miles beneath the sea as part of a scientific expedition, and this week the Titanic director shared details of what he found in one of the deepest points on Earth, the Mariana Trench.

Cameron appeared at an annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, sharing details from his 2009 voyage. He recounted that the first thing he saw wasn’t part of the ocean at all, the Mother Nature Network reported.

“When I got to the bottom, I saw skid marks from the ROV,” James Cameron said on Wednesday about his 2009 survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. At the conference, the scientific results of his expedition to the Mariana Trench were presented to a packed crowd, CBS News noted.

James Cameron’s expedition traveled 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) to the ocean floor, beating the previous world record for deepest expedition by five feet.

It’s too close to call it the record, Cameron noted.

“Because the error [calculating the depth] on Don’s dive is much greater, we’re just going to have to call it a tie,” he said.

James Cameron and researchers involved in the trip were able to find never-before-seen species, which they brought back to the surface. They also discovered what Mother Nature Network described as a “bizarre microbial mat community.”

James Cameron said he had intense preparations before the undersea journey.

“I did yoga for six months so I could contort myself into the sphere,” he said.

The intensity of the trip was also difficult, he said.

Cameron noted that as he sank down through the murky ocean, he burned through a checklist meant to distract him. It wasn’t enough, however.

“I still had 3,000 meters left to go with pretty much nothing left to do but sit quietly and think about the pressure building up around the hull,” James Cameron said.