James Cameron takes voyage to the deep

The film director James Cameron surfaced yesterday Monday from the first solo dive to the bottom of the world's deepest ocean to declare that it looked like a desolate lunar landscape.

During his mission to explore the dark, freezing waters of the Mariana Trench - 35,576ft below the surface of the Pacific - Cameron found few signs of life apart from some inch-long prawn-like creatures.

Using a specially-designed submarine, he became the first human to cast eyes on the place known as Challenger Deep - a two-man mission in 1960 involved no observation because the craft kicked up too much sand from the ocean floor, reducing visibility to zero.

Cameron suffered mechanical issues during his three-hour, seven-mile descent and was forced to cut short the voyage when hydraulic failure meant he was unable to carry out plans to collect samples.

All but a small amount of silt was washed away on his ascent back to the surface.

Nevertheless, Cameron, the director of Titanic and Avatar, described his mission as a huge success - and the start of what would be a series of journeys to explore the Mariana Trench, 200 miles from the island of Guam.

"It was very lunar, a very desolate place, very isolated," he said. "My feeling was one of complete isolation from all of humanity.

"I just sat there looking out the window and appreciating it. It's very different than what you imagine. You have to go through it, you have to really experience it.

"It's really the sense of isolation, more than anything, realising how tiny you are down in this big vast black unknown and unexplored place."

Cameron said that while everyone had been hoping to find "sea monsters" below the surface, even he had been surprised at the barren nature of the ocean's depths.

"I didn't see anything bigger than about an inch long," he said. "I didn't see fish. The only free swimmers I saw were these amphipods, which are shrimp-like.

"I didn't feel like I got to a place where I could take interesting geology samples or found anything interesting biologically.

"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."

The specially-designed lime-green craft, called the Deepsea Challenger, was designed to withstand the pressure levels of eight tons per square inch at the bottom of the trench. It has a small passenger container, which heats to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit at the start of the dive because of the amount of electronics on board, before the temperatures rapidly fall towards freezing as it enters deep waters. Cameron also disclosed that delays to the start of the dive, caused by poor weather, meant that he might miss the London premier of Titanic 3D. "It was like the ocean presented me with a choice," he said.