James Cameron's Deep-Ocean Quest

Late last summer, PM spoke with James Cameron, winner of the magazine's 2011 Breakthrough Leadership Award, about his enthusiasm for filmmaking, engineering, and, most of all, exploration. Today, he announced that in the coming weeks he'll try to dive to the deepest point in the world's ocean—the 36,201-foot Challenger Deep. Cameron talked about his ambitious diving goals during his 2011 interview, but some of the details did not make the final edition of PM. So, on the cusp of his dive attempt, we're publishing the rest of the interview here.

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In short, why do this? Why dive to the Mariana Trench?

Two of the deepest places in the worlds oceans exist in the Mariana Trench system. But also of interest are the Kermadec Trench and the Tonga Trench, which has possibly the second deepest spot in the worlds oceansclose to 36,000 feet. So there are a number of targets around the Southwestern Pacific that need to be explored. And there are other deep trenches in the world as well. Theyre the last great frontier for exploration on this planet.

You pioneered the use of syntactic foam as a structural material. What are the benefits of making the subs structure double as the flotation system?

Syntactic foam is an epoxy matrix containing glass microspheres that are hollow. Its been the standard of deep-ocean construction for about the last 20 years. It had always been used as passive flotation. We thought it was silly to build a vehicle out of negatively buoyant substances, like aluminum or steel, and then have to add all this flotation to get it neutrally buoyant so it could operate at the bottom of the ocean.

Did you have to reengineer the foam to make that possible?

We had to up our game. We had to make it stronger, and we had to make it a more uniform, more consistent material. So we spent the last couple of years working in, essentially, the materials science of creating the ultimate deep-ocean syntactic foam. Weve now done that and mass-produced it, at least for our own internal use, to build this vehicle. Thats one example of a kind of heritage of ideas that started 12 years ago and had a continuous through line in all of our technical development.

Was that idea considered radical?

Well, it was so radical no one else was doing it. There were actually several more, [such as] creating lithium-polymer batteries that would operate at ambient pressure, in an oil bath, and also spooling fiber-optic technology, which was our data connection, or our data tether, to the vehicle. These are all common practices now; at that time they were radical and hadnt been done. And we had to build the vehicle ourselves, operate it, and demonstrate that these ideas worked, and then other people adopted them.

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Engineering for the incredible pressures at depth is obviously a challenge.

Anything you designwhether its a view port, or an optical front port for a camera system, or a penetrator that allows electrical signals or power to move back and forth across the pressure boundaryhas to be designed to withstand 16,000 psi. We have six different pressure chambers all in operation around the clock pressure-testing every single component that goes into the sub.

Including cameras?

We are building full-ocean-depth-rated 3D cameras right now, and well be testing them in a pressure chamber later this fall. We are going to have cameras inside the sub; were going to have cameras outside the sub; were taking a huge lighting array. Well light up the place. Well do the same thing we did at abyssal depths, well just do it at Hadal depths.

Youve had incredible successes pushing the bounds of 3D for recent feature films. What can 3D do for exploration?

I think the lessons, the takeaway, for the lay public are deeper and more meaningful when they see it in 3D. You feel engaged. You feel like you are bearing witness to whats happening, as opposed to watching, and I think these are subtle differences, but they are very real. And I think it has to do with our brain wiring. Theres neuroscience that now shows the regions of the brain that process parallax. They relate it to other parts of the brain that are doing image analysis . . . and giving you all kinds of depth cues that have nothing to do with parallax. But when you add parallaxor stereoscopy, or stereospis as its called medicallyinto it, all of a sudden it all clicks and it becomes very real.

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There have been rumors that youre interested in deep-ocean footage for Avatar 2.

I dont know where that originated, but thats crazy. Theres nothing Im going to learn at the bottom of the Mariana Trench thats going to in any way impact Avatar. Im perfectly capable of imagining all the underwater creatures I need without seeing any more than Ive seen in 40 years of diving.

The media has also characterized this dive as part of a "race to the bottom."

This is a project that I started six years ago with some engineers that worked with me on my [previous dives]. Ive already done seven deep-ocean expeditions. We just decided to build a sub that had the capability to go to those depths, which does not exist in the world right now.

Whos going to pay for it?

I am. If it was being done by a major oceanographic institute or by the government it would be [expensive], sure. But were doing it super cheap because we have good engineers and good ideas and we cut away all the fat, and we work with a very small team. So we think we are going to get a lot of bang for the buck.

Do you know how much its going to cost?

I know exactly how much its going to costnot to the penny, because were not done yet, but its going to be in the zone of $8 million. I spent two and a half million dollars building the ROVs that we used to explore the inside of the Titanic and the Bismarck, and then we took them to the hydrothermal vents in 2003, and then we took them to the Titanic again in 2005. Those things eventually paid for themselves twice over, so theres no reason to assume that I cant make money with this vehicle as well, or at least pay for it.

When you go down in the sub, how would you describe your state of mind?

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I think theres a sense of heightened alertness in the weeks and then days and then hours leading up to any given dive. Youve planned, youve thought of everything, youve worked through all your contingencies, youve double- and triple-checked all of the hardware. Youre pretty certain of success or you wont be diving. You will have called a hold and worked the problem and fixed it. Theres always a slight apprehension, but for me the moment Ive gone through the hatch and sealed it, its just the excitement of the dive itselfof looking forward to what we are going to see, what we are going to record, and what we are going to discover. And that wipes away any sense of apprehension from that moment on.

And what is it that keeps pulling you back to ocean exploration?

I love the ocean. Its still a very mysterious and enigmatic place. And I love exploration in all its forms. For me, the question is what keeps pulling me back to Hollywood. Im much more at home in exploration and scientific investigation. That just suits me better than the crazy, glossy, fickle world of Hollywood. You make a movie and youre judged by a bunch of bozo critics; you do a piece of engineering and . . . the laws of thermodynamics are not an opinion. Theyre an immutable set of rules; you play within those rules when you do engineering, and your stuff either works or it doesnt.

That passion for engineering certainly comes through in your movies.

I guess theres an overlap between those worlds in two ways. One, I like doing movies about the impact of technology on our lives, and even Titanic can be lumped into that category. The other is we use the most advanced technology we can lay our hands on at the time we make the movie. To me, that makes it more fun.

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