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James Cameron dives to ocean floor to film 'last frontier'

The director behind Titanic and Avatar, is heading to the sea floor armed with 3D cameras and lights that will capture the moment for cinemagoers.

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Fewer people have reached the deepest point in the world's oceans than have walked on the Moon. Now that rare band is to be joined by a member of the Hollywood A-list.

James Cameron, the director behind Titanic and Avatar, is heading to the sea floor armed with 3D cameras and lights that will capture the moment for cinemagoers.

He set out from the Pacific island of Guam for the Mariana Trench, and is descending more than seven miles down in a lime green reinforced submersible, the first solo mission to the lowest point on Earth.

The Deepsea Challenger weighs 11 tons and was built amid great secrecy in Australia over the last eight years. During the nine-hour mission, the 6ft 2in film-maker is having to stand hunched, barely able to move in a 3ft-wide space, controlling movements with a joystick. The expedition was under way last night (Wednesday) although 57-year-old Cameron is out of communication.

The director said: "The deep trenches are the last unexplored frontier on our planet, with scientific riches enough to fill a hundred years of exploration."

Some have accused him of ego-driven grandstanding. After all, there will be little to see in the depths. But Cameron says there will be a valuable scientific element to his extreme dive.

He is collecting animals, rocks, water and sediment using a robotic arm, and deploying traps with bait to attract undiscovered creatures. The rocks will be analysed by geologists seeking to understand the movement of tectonic plates and bacteria will be studied by scientists seeking to discover how life survives in extreme conditions.

Before setting out, he said: "The goal of all this is not just to set records and do grandstanding dives. We want to push the envelope not only of scientific knowledge but also of engineering.

"We are there to do science but also to bring the average person, who only imagines this, to show them what it's like." The Mariana Trench is located off the Philippines and reaches its maximum depth at a point called Challenger Deep. The pressure there is more than 1,000 times that at the surface.

The only mission there, by the US navy in 1960, saw Jacques Piccard, a Swiss oceanographer, and Don Walsh, a US navy lieutenant, reach the bottom.

They reported seeing "snuff coloured ooze," a shrimp and a flatfish. Scientists have disputed whether a fish could have been living at such a depth.

Describing the moment they reached the bottom, Walsh, 80, said: "I'm afraid we didn't have any profound words that could be written down somewhere. It was a quiet moment and then we realised that we weren't going to see anything."

Remotely operated vehicles have returned in 1995 and 2009 and found six animal species including worms, sea cucumbers and crustaceans.

Cameron's preparations were conducted in secret as several rival projects vied to get there first. Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Oceanic one-man submarine is likely to dive to the same spot in the Mariana Trench later this year, carrying pilot Chris Welsh.

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