James Cameron reveals what he saw after he reached deepest point in the ocean that is 35,787 feet underwater

The movie director broke a world record when he took the plunge

James Cameron revealed what he saw when he reached the deepest point of the ocean some 35,787 feet underwater.

That’s right; not only has Cameron helmed some of the biggest movies of our generation – including Titanic and the Avatar franchise – but he’s also a world-record-breaking explorer.

The celebrated director, now 70, embarked on a solo expedition back in 2012 to fulfil his ‘boyhood dream’.

The thought of being alone at the deepest point of the ocean certainly fills me with dread, but Cameron dedicated $10 million and several years to building his Deepsea Challenger submersible.

On March 26, 2012, he took the terrifying plunge into the Pacific Ocean and down the seven-mile-deep Mariana Trench, located near Guam.

James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger (National Geographic)

It took Cameron almost three hours to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, where he recorded a maximum depth of 35,787 feet (10,908 metres).

For context, that’s more than twice the depth of the Titanic wreckage which is 12,500 feet deep (3,800 metres).

Cameron successfully made 33 visits to the site of the shipwreck between 1995 and 2005.

In Mariana’s Trench, meanwhile, Cameron spent around four hours exploring the ocean’s floor, capturing video footage along the way.

Naturally, the filmmaker turned this into a documentary, titled James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge 3D, which is available to stream for free now via Plex.

He told BBC News of the experience: “It was absolutely the most remote, isolated place on the planet. I really feel like in one day I’ve been to another planet and come back.”

He described the depths of the ocean as ‘a sterile, almost desert-like place’.

Elsewhere, he told NPR journalist Melissa Block: “It’s very lunar. You don’t expect a profusion of life, like you might see at, let’s say, a hydrothermal vent community.”

Cameron also took equipment to retrieve sediment samples from silt found at the great depths.

“We did find 68 new species, most of them bacteria, but some small invertebrates, as well, that were brought back,” he told Block.

James Cameron made history with his Deepsea Challenger mission in 2012 (National Geographic)

Cameron’s feat was the second-ever manned trip to the Mariana Trench seafloor since US Navy submersible Trieste, piloted by Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, in 1960.

Another 20 people have reached Challenger Deep since, including, in 2021, OceanGate Titan submersible victim Hamish Harding.

He and four others – OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, and Paul-Henry Nargeolet – died on June 18 2023 en route to the Titanic wreckage when the Titan sub imploded at around 10,977 foot deep.