James Cameron completed an 8,000-meter dive this week (!)

The following is an excerpt from an email from James Cameron to Don Walsh, co-pilot of the bathyscaphe Trieste, following Cameron’s successful (and record-breaking) 8,000-meter solo submarine dive in the “Deepsea Challenger” to the bottom of the New Britain Trench, Wednesday. Don Walsh will be joining the expedition in Guam, prior to Cameron’s 11,000-meter dive to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. See for instance The New York Times and read the entire email here on deepseachallenge.com

“Sitting down there at 27000′, alone in the dark, with no comms, no contact whatsoever with the world so far above, and nothing but the ingenuity of the engineering to get me back… it’s simultaneously scary and exhilarating. It’s the precipice we put ourselves on by choice, to test ourselves and our machines. I configured the cameras to get a good shot of the weights coming off and hitting the seafloor in 3D, but I can’t say I spent an undue amount of time on the lighting. I wanted to see those babies jettisoned as quick as possible. It’s a good feeling when 350kg comes off, with the characteristic “SHOONK” as the weight carriages run down the slide-rails.”