The Deepsea Challenger solo dive

James Cameron · 2012 CE · Earth

The Deepsea Challenger solo dive — James Cameron · 2012 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Take a purpose-built vertical submersible to the bottom of the Challenger Deep and work there.

Historical context

Fifty-two years after Trieste, people had been to the bottom of the Challenger Deep only once, when Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh spent about twenty minutes there in 1960. Cameron's team spent seven years designing and building, in Sydney, a craft that would fall fast and work at the bottom, with Ron Allum as co-designer and National Geographic and Rolex as partners. The season began in grief, when Andrew Wight and Mike deGruy were killed in a helicopter crash in February 2012. On 26 March, local time, Cameron reached the bottom alone after a descent of two hours and thirty-six minutes, and stayed about three hours by National Geographic's account, until a hydraulic leak and failing thrusters sent him back up.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Repairs at Apra Harbor

    March 2012

    In mid-March 2012, by the expedition journal, the support ship Mermaid Sapphire turns into Apra Harbor on Guam with Deepsea Challenger aboard, after the trials off Papua New Guinea. Winds of 30 knots then keep her in port for days while the sub team works through the craft's hydraulics.

  2. Waiting at Ulithi

    2012 CE

    Around 20 March, late in the evening, the Mermaid Sapphire and the smaller survey ship Barakuda leave Guam and steam south-west to Ulithi, an atoll in the western Caroline Islands. On the morning of Saturday 24 March, local time, both sail from Ulithi for the Challenger Deep, hoping the sea stays calm.

  3. Launch into the Challenger Deep

    26 March 2012

    In the dark before dawn on Monday 26 March 2012, local time, Cameron folds himself into the steel pilot sphere on the deck of the Mermaid Sapphire, the hatch is bolted shut, and a crane lowers the green submersible into the Pacific above the Challenger Deep.

  4. Two hours and thirty-six minutes

    2012 CE

    The sub falls upright and spinning, as it was engineered to. By Joe MacInnis's journal it is at 1,219 metres ten minutes after leaving the surface, falling at 4.1 knots, and passes 4,511 metres forty-five minutes later; at 9,754 metres Cameron slows to two knots, and he is on the bottom 156 minutes after leaving the surface.

  5. Ten thousand nine hundred and eight metres

    2012 CE

    At 7:52 in the morning, local time, Cameron settles on a soft, almost gelatinous plain at the bottom of the Challenger Deep and types 'All systems OK'. National Geographic gave his depth on arrival as 10,898 metres; the deepest point of the dive is recorded as 10,908 metres.

  6. Life on the plain

    2012 CE

    Cameron sees no fish and no living thing more than about two and a half centimetres long. The only free swimmers in his lights are small amphipods, shrimp-like crustaceans.

  7. Seventy minutes back up

    2012 CE

    With his window smeared, his arm useless and his starboard thrusters gone, Cameron drops his weights and comes 'screaming back up'. At noon, local time, the sub breaks the surface, is spotted from a helicopter and is lifted aboard by crane.

Outcome

10,908 metres reached alone on 26 March 2012, local time, and about three hours on the bottom of the Challenger Deep by National Geographic's account, cut short by a hydraulic leak.

James Cameron

Film director who spent seven years building a vertical submersible with Ron Allum and dived it alone to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in 2012.

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Sources

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