Today we made two more dives with the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. They were brief excursions to moderate depths but confirmed the team’s ability to turn the sub around quickly. She went in the water at 4 a.m. and descended to 800 feet (244 meters). Six hours later, with Jim in the pilot sphere for the second time, she was on the bottom at 500 feet (152 meters). In spite of 20-knot winds and strong currents, the four launches and recoveries were flawless.

At 3 p.m., after navigating around the south end of the Ulithi Atoll, the ship eased into the bay in front of Falalop Island. She made a wide turn, and her captain blew two long blasts on the horn in tribute to Johnny Rulmal, who opened his home and his heart to all of us on the Mermaid Sapphire and Barakuda. With Charlie Arneson in the lead, we gathered at the bridge rail to wave at the people on the white-sand beach; the hours we spent with the soft-spoken men and women on Asor and Falalop Islands were among the most luminous of our trip.

Our long sea voyage is over. Fifty-five days ago we sailed out of Sydney Harbour and made our first test dives in Jervis Bay. We steamed north to Papua New Guinea and made our second test dives and first research dives. After stopping in Guam, we made an unpiloted dive into the Challenger Deep, followed by Jim’s historic descent. This morning we made our 13th and final dive.

The contours of the next steps are still emerging. The scientists will go back to their labs and start analyzing the samples collected and the hundreds of hours of high-resolution images. The scientific community will assess our systems and techniques and decide if they want to participate in a second expedition.

It’s too early to reflect on the real meaning of what we achieved here, but first impressions are already coming from the Mermaid Sapphire’s main deck. “Since the first day it’s been fix this, fix that, repair this, and repair that. It was like Apollo XIII over and over again,” Rich Robles told me. “We didn’t build the sub, the sub built us,” said John Garvin.

I’ve been on the ship for two months. We were so far from home there were moments when it felt like we were on a small spaceship orbiting a big blue planet. At carefully calculated intervals we launched a piloted vehicle—a vertical flying fish—to drop down and inspect some of the planet’s great chasms. The pilot came back with magical stories and breathtaking images.

Jim said it best some months ago. “Nobody ever said, ‘I want to grow up to be a robot.’ Astronaut, yes, or deep-ocean explorer. The human heart and soul is best satisfied by actually going, by projecting not just our consciousness through robotic eyes, but by going out there ourselves, to see it with our own eyes. Robots can do preliminary scouting to make it safer for us. But ultimately we have to gather our courage and go ourselves. To bear witness. To perform the task.”

It was a great honor to be on the front lines with Team Cameron and try to tell their story. I knew from the start that I couldn’t get the ocean, the expedition, and the Challenger Deep into a journal any more than I could haul up the Gulf Stream in a plankton net. Words and sentences are a mighty thin net. But they can be woven into a kind of truth about human beings.

Day after day, month after month, on a ship in the western Pacific, a group of ordinary individuals did extraordinary things. They were led by a man willing to put his money, his ideas, and his life on the line for something he deeply believed in. That something was exploration.

Exploration is a force that gives us meaning. It is driven by our curiosity to know what lies beyond the horizon. It is also driven by a hunger for self-discovery, an investigation of the subliminal self—something never fully realized by remotely operated vehicles.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

“I just wanted to … say thank you … to everyone for making it possible for me to … make yesterday’s dive.” The shy and self-effacing Ron Allum, codesigner of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, had been waiting three years to say those words.

Team Cameron was on the bridge of the Mermaid Sapphire reviewing yesterday’s highlights of Allum’s 3,700-foot (1,128-meter), six-hour dive off the west side of Ulithi Atoll. Twenty-five minutes after leaving the surface, he reached a flat seafloor near a steep cliff. Crouched inside the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, he reported a “strong current running.” While he waited on the bottom, the ship’s two-ton Quasar ROV was lowered through the depths until it was within sight. Then, assisted by the communications team on the Mermaid Sapphire, he and the ROV flew across the seafloor to rendezvous with lander Mike.

Jim was in the Mermaid Sapphire’s ROV room watching all of this on video screens. The three vehicles, ten cameras, and multiple arrays of lights parked on the seafloor transformed him into the A-list Hollywood movie director. “Move slowly to the right,” he told Allum. “Fly in close and dim your lights,” he advised ROV pilot Donnie Cameron. For three hours, the man on the ship and the man on the seafloor—co-inventors of the world’s deepest diving sub—worked together to make a permanent 3-D record of sediments and rocks, the sub and the lander, and the animals attracted to the lights.

When they finished, Allum turned south and began to explore his surroundings. “I’ve found a big rock,” he said. The sharp-edged rock marked the base of the cliff, and Allum—a man with a long history of cave diving— wanted to know what it looked like. Powering upward with his vertical thrusters, he discovered an almost vertical scarp filled with fissures and cracks. He ascended more than 100 feet (30 meters), shining his eight-foot (two-meter) column of lights on countless creatures, including glass sponges, black coral, and crinoids.

Everyone on the ship was cheering for the man inside the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. His fingerprints were on most of the sub’s thousands of components. He had thought about them, he had responded to Jim’s thoughts about them, and he’d brought together the initial team that assembled them. His brilliant innovator’s mind conceived many of them. The buoyancy foam was just one example.

Syntactic foam for deep-ocean buoyancy had been around for decades and companies advertised products that would go to full ocean depth. When Allum tested their samples under hydrostatic pressure, they cracked or collapsed at 16,000 pounds per square inch (1,100 bars). After repeated failures, he started thinking about making his own. He spent months blending, testing, and tinkering and came up with a mixture of glass microspheres suspended in a mix of epoxy resin. Then, in a swoosh of lateral thinking, he decided not to set the foam in a vacuum like everyone else; he would set it under pressure. It worked. The DEEPSEA CHALLENGER‘s foam doesn’t yield until 22,000 pounds per square inch (1,517 bars) and gets lighter at depth because it compresses less than seawater.

There was a game-changing bonus: The foam’s compression and tension strength meant it could be machined into slabs and glued into a multilayered “strong beam” that fit the pilot sphere like a top hat. In a stroke of alchemy genius, Allum eliminated the need for a heavy-metal structure to hold the sub together.

Allum has about him an unsophisticated innocence, an inherent goodness that seems out of place in a fast-paced, high-tech world. When he climbed out of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER after the dive, he struggled for words to express his gratitude. He didn’t need to make the effort; his mile-wide smile said it all. The football stadium cheers and applause from his teammates was a “thank you” for all he’d done for them.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

Ulithi Atoll

Last night the Mermaid Sapphire left the lagoon and steamed to the deep water on the west side of Ulithi Atoll. At 4 a.m. the ship’s bow and stern thrusters began holding us in position a few miles west of the Zowariyau Passage. Today’s objective is to prepare for our next dive into the Challenger Deep. As part of that preparation, Ron Allum will pilot the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER to a 4,000-foot (1,219-meter) rendezvous with lander Mike and the ship’s Quasar ROV.

David confirms an essential truth about this expedition. Knowing there would be months of hardship and moments of peril, Jim selected his team partners with rigorous forethought. They had to be professionally competent and able to adapt to change. They had to take care of each other and be willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

Ulithi

This morning we moved the Mermaid Sapphire a short distance inside the Ulithi lagoon until she was over the U.S.S. Mississinewa, an oil tanker that was torpedoed in 1944 and went to the bottom fully loaded. The wind had more strength than yesterday and a three-knot current was running. We dropped the ship’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) over the side and spent an hour inspecting the 500-foot-long (152-meter-long) tanker lying upside down on the seafloor.

Like so many people on Team Cameron, 41-year-old John has a resume that makes you wonder how one person can do so many interesting things in such a short time. He was an actor in London’s West End and is an accomplished musician. He’s got more than 20 years of diving experience and is one of the world’s leading technical diving instructors. A qualified recompression chamber safety officer, he managed the logistics and safety divers for Tanya Streeter’s world-record free dive to 525 feet (160 meters). Recently, he was an actor, screenwriter, stunt diver, and dive coordinator for the feature film Sanctum. If you want to know everything there is to know about a “rebreather” and how to use it safely to explore the ocean, you pick up the phone and call John Garvin.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

Asor Island

This morning we moved the Mermaid Sapphire half a mile east into the lee of Asor Island. It gave more protection from the wind and brought us closer to another of the emerald-green islets that dot the rim of this spectacular lagoon. The breeze was blowing at 20 knots and the tiny stretch of land in front of the ship seemed suspended on the foaming breakers of the outer reef.

The sub team spent all day working on the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. The dive to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, where the pressure was a thousand times greater than at sea level, took a toll on her hydraulic system, batteries, and some of the thrusters; several of their components are being replaced and tested before the next dive.

At the end of the day a group of us climbed into a small boat, drove close to the island; dropped over the side with masks, fins, and snorkels; and edged a little closer to the real truth of these earth-shaping waters. The bottom of the sea was 40 feet (12 meters) below. We looked into the cathedral-blue depths and saw large, rectangular objects scattered across the seafloor. Then we held our breaths and swam downward for a close-up view of World War II landing craft—small, amphibious assault craft that carried troops from larger ships to the beach. We saw dozens of them scattered across the sediments, full of rusting holes, small fish, and other creatures. They were a reminder that just before the American invasion of Okinawa in 1945, more than 600 ships and tens of thousands of sailors and marines were anchored in this wide, volcanic lagoon.

Ulithi

This morning the Mermaid Sapphire steamed south of Falalop Island for two miles, turned west, and passed through Mugai Channel into Ulithi’s 212-square-mile (549-square-kilometer) lagoon. From the ship’s bridge we saw a magnificent reach of blue water 22 miles (35 kilometers) long and more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) wide. In the brilliant sunshine, under a steady east wind, the dark-green islets along its rim looked like they’d been torn from the pages of Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island.

The crystal-clear ocean beneath the ship’s keel was 100 feet (30 meters) deep. Our objective was to steam north to the Urushi anchorage, drop anchor in the calm blue water, and let the 3-D film crew get “steady-ship” shots of the sub and launch-and-recovery teams working on the main deck.

What do you do when you need a 60-pound (27-kilogram) 3-D camera hauled four stories up from the main deck to the bridge? Call the film crew. What do you do when you want a team in the Zodiac filming the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER going into a heaving ocean? Call the film crew. What do you do when the sub team, science team, and ship’s crew are having a late-night party and you have to record the festivities? Call the crew that never sleeps.

They’re multitalented, tenacious, and tireless. Since we left Australia they have included Chris McHattie, John Turner, Aron Walker, Matt Green, Gwill Hewetson, Sam Winzar, Manning Tillman, Simon Christidis, Richard Kickbush, and Jay Hanrahan. Their director of photography is Jules O’ Loughlin, and their second unit director is Dr. Glenn Singleman. Academy Award winner and film director John Bruno is their leader.

They’re the most physically active team on the ship. When you see them inside the hallways and stairways, in the high-noon heat of the main deck, on the rising and falling inflatable boat, or in a hot jungle clearing in Papua New Guinea, they’re usually carrying something—cameras, recorders, cables—and its always black and heavy. Stand next to one of them in the flaming heat as the sub is launched and you can hear the sweat pouring off his forehead.

The film crew is the levity and musical center of the ship. On the seven-day sea voyage from Sydney, Australia, to Papua New Guinea, McHattie and Hewetson told stories and jokes that had the rest of us in tears. It was hot-zone humor at its best at a time when we needed it most. They’re blessed with an abundance of musical talent. When McHattie and Turner join forces with Garvin and Barkoczy, they rip the air open with flaming guitars.

John Bruno and his team are driven by a singular mission: to record all the people, technologies, and moments—above and below the ocean—that have made up the DEEPSEA CHALLEGE expedition and turn these elements into a feature film and other media.

After the last dive, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER will be stowed, bags will be packed, and all of us will walk down the gangway of this fine ship. The only thing remaining will be the collective words, thoughts, and images—the story—of an expedition now slipping into history. It is the story of a man who grew up in a century transformed by science and became aware of the values and pitfalls of technology. It is the story of a man of Paleolithic persistence who took the fire of his imagination into the depths beyond the abyss, and in doing so redefined the meaning of exploration, broadening it, making it sing with scientific purpose. In telling this story, the film crew is creating the master “memory” of this expedition.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

Yesterday, for the first time in 52 years, there was a brief, bright fire inside the deepest spot in the global ocean. It was created by the intense illumination from the sub’s 700 LED lights and the fiery fortitude of the man inside the crew sphere.

Resolute courage is the mastery of committing oneself to a life-enhancing, long-duration mission and seeing it through no matter how difficult or dangerous the challenge. For many of us, Jim’s most courageous act was not his seven-mile dive, but his sustained commitment to constructing a radically new vehicle to give everyone on Earth a scientific understanding of the world beneath the abyss, a place where earthquakes are born and life may have had its beginnings.

For more than seven years and particularly for the past six months, numerous versions of resolute courage have been a fundamental part of this project. There is Jim’s unwavering, damn-the-torpedoes commitment and the determination of his co-designer Ron Allum and their team to get the sub built. There is the dedication of John Garvin and his life-support team to the safety and performance of the pilot. And there is the resolve of David Wotherspoon and his team to get the sub operational and move it safely into and out of the water. The unspoken mantra for Jim and his “magnificent 30” is: We will find a way.

The mission and its mantra were contagious. Everyone knew they were working on a once-in-a-century project that has echoes of the Wright brothers’ first flight and the initial ascent of Mount Everest. Officers and crew of the Mermaid Sapphire performed superbly and teams at National Geographic and Rolex worked around the clock. Perhaps the most sublime configuration of courage came from the wives, husbands, and partners of the “magnificent 30.” They knew their loved ones were on a small ship on the other side of the world working under severe stress in arduous conditions. For long months they endured the loneliness and uncertainty of postponements and delays. We don’t necessarily recognize or celebrate these various forms of resolute courage, but they were essential to the success of our mission.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

The Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench

“He’s on the bottom. His depth is 35,756 feet. All systems are performing well.” These were the words relayed to us on the Mermaid Sapphire after Jim’s historic, 7-mile (11-kilometer) touchdown on the sediments of the Challenger Deep.

We were in a small, dark communications room on the ship’s bridge. Five computer screens displayed data about the status and position of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. A hefty black console revealed the running time of the dive and vital information from the sub’s pilot sphere, including depth, speed, temperature, and oxygen and carbon dioxide levels. Life-support specialist John Garvin, communications experts Paul Roberts and Tim Bulman, and Jim’s wife, Suzy Amis Cameron, were listening intently to the words coming from the 32-foot inflatable boat a mile (1.6 kilometers) in front of our ship. The engines and generators of the Mermaid Sapphire overpower acoustic signals from the sub; the much quieter communication boat picked up the signals and relayed them to us.

Crouched inside the pilot sphere of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, Jim left the surface at 5:15 a.m. Ten minutes later, he and his gravity rocket were at 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) and moving toward the center of the Earth at a speed of 4.1 knots. Forty-five minutes later he passed through 14,800 feet (4,511 meters). At 32,000 feet (9,754 meters) he slowed his speed to two knots. One hundred and fifty-six minutes after leaving the starlit surface, he was on the bottom.

During the entire descent, everyone in the communications room toggled between concern and confidence. We knew that the forces of the ocean—the wind, waves, currents, cold, darkness, and pressure—had been doing their majestic thing for billions of years. We knew that at the bottom of the Challenger Deep the pressure on the pilot sphere would be equivalent to the weight of more than 20 space shuttles. But we had confidence in the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER and how she’d been assembled and tested.

Three days ago, on the island of Ulithi, Jim spoke with Ali Haleyalut, a master navigator from the island of Yap. Afterward he said, “For millennium, explorers have been pitting themselves against the ocean. Here in Micronesia, they built outrigger canoes, sailed them thousands of miles from island to island, and revealed great truths about the known world. They were successful because they trusted their knowledge, their technology, and their teams. We are part of that continuum.

“This is a normal dive for our new vehicle. She was designed and built to withstand the forces at full ocean depth. She’s made piloted dives to 1,000, 4,000, and 8,000 meters and an unpiloted descent to more than 10,000 meters. We’re trying to reveal great truths about the deepest, darkest chasm on Earth. We’ll be successful because we trust our knowledge, our technology, and ultimately our team.”

Jim spent 2 hours and 34 minutes on the bottom. He drove across a flat, tan-colored seafloor and climbed 45 meters up a slope. The sub’s hydraulic system malfunctioned, and he was unable to recover rock samples, but he picked up a sediment sample, and his five cameras brought back a treasure-trove of 3-D visual information.

After his 90-minute ascent to the sunlight, Jim asked us to assemble in the ship’s mess hall. He came in and looked at the men who built his sub, moved it into and out of the ocean, and filmed every step of the journey. Ron Allum had been working on this project for almost a decade. Others had been working on it for more than a year. Some had been away from their families for months. A few were so tired their eyes were bloodshot and they were speaking in grunts.

“We just did the impossible,”Jim told us. “You remember when you were a kid and you wanted to build a rocket ship in your garage and fly it to the moon? That’s exactly what we just did. And you guys made it happen.

“To me it’s such a great celebration of how a small team can do such extraordinary things. Not Northrup-Grumman, McDonald-Douglas, or NASA, but a small team where everybody has many skills and come together like family.”

“How was it on the bottom?” someone asked. Jim paused and said, “I never felt more removed from humanity. I felt outside of any kind of time and space. The challenge of getting down there—to lay eyes on it and begin to understand it—makes it a very special place.

“We set a goal for ourselves—to challenge the unknown, to go and look it in the eye, and we did it. And when I say we, I mean it. I didn’t build that sub. I didn’t launch it. You guys made it happen.”

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Editor’s Note: Recalculation of the maximum depth of the Challenger Deep dive showed the sub actually reached 35,787 feet (6.77 miles/10.90 km).

“We do it for the betterment of our people. We do it for safety.” Ali Haleyalut looked at Jim and smiled. Jim nodded slowly. “I understand.”

The two men were sitting under a thatched-roof house on the island of Falalop in Ulithi, an atoll in the westernmost Caroline Islands. Ali, 55, is one of those rare individuals known as a master navigator, someone with the skill and experience to sail an outrigger canoe thousands of miles across the open ocean without benefit of a compass, using information gleaned only from the sky and the sea. During the night he reads the patterns of stars as they move across the heavens; during the day he reads the composition of waves as his long-keeled boat slips between them. From the Southern Cross to the North Star, he knows the names of more than 160 stars and where they rise and set on the horizon. He knows how to read the direction, size, and speed of ocean waves and how they reflect off unseen islands. Cloud formation, land-based birds, and shallow water reflections on the undersides of clouds help guide him to his target island.

“It takes years of memorizing and calculations to become a master,” he told Jim. The man who had recently dived his new research sub to 26,000 feet (7,925 meters) smiled, “You have an incredible skill.”

They talked for more than an hour about how Micronesian outrigger canoes are made and the critical role of the master carver. Ali told Jim how food and water are carried in the canoes and how they troll for fish and cook them on a bed of stones. A rooster crowed in a nearby yard and children played under a breadfruit tree. They spoke about the eight levels of becoming a master and the importance of personal leadership. They discussed how the ocean informs you when a cyclone is coming. “One of the great lessons the sea teaches us,” said Ali, “is patience. When the wind dies and your boat stops, you still know where the island is, so you must be patient.”

Jim steered the conversation toward technologies like satellite navigation and GPS systems, and both men came to the same conclusion. These technologies are astonishingly helpful but you need to know what to do when they stop working; you need to know the basics.

The subject turned to global warming, rising sea levels, and threats to low-lying islands like Ulithi and thousands of others in Micronesia. “My father told me that it was essential to become a master navigator because we might have to go to another island. The old threats included famine; now there’s a new threat.”

They talked about a special ceremony that takes place before master navigators begin a long and perilous voyage. “The last time we had this ceremony,” said Ali, “was in 1975 when my uncle sailed to Okinawa. But you’re going on a very difficult voyage. I would like you and your co-pilot, Ron Allum, to join me tomorrow for a special blessing.”

The master navigator of the sea’s surface and the bold explorer of the sea’s depths clasped hands, and Jim smiled. “Thank you. We’ll take any blessing we can.”

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis

Onboard the S.S. Barakuda, steaming to Ulithi Atoll

At midday we’re on a course of 240 degrees, steaming toward Ulithi, 40 islets surrounding an enormous, oval-shaped lagoon in the westernmost Caroline Islands. Rain clouds in every direction have turned the sky a ghostly gray. Winds, waves, and swells pushing on our stern from the northeast are giving us an improbably smooth ride.

Even on a small ship like the Barakuda, there are moments when you forget that you’re on the ocean. When the floor beneath your feet is reasonably stable and you’re looking at an Internet-connected computer screen, you’re distracted from the fact that a few feet away, the world’s biggest ocean is searching for weak spots in your ship and your self-confidence. Yesterday morning she drove a marlinspike through mine.

I was standing on the Barakuda‘s small main deck next to a narrow opening in the side of the ship. Seven-foot (two-meter) swells with white-capped waves were pressing against our stern quarter. I’ve made many a boat-transfer in my life, and I know the deal. You stand by until the 32-foot RHIB (a rigid-hull, 500-hp, inflatable boat) comes alongside the Barakuda, matches her speed through the water, and nudges her husky pontoon against the steel hull. You wait for a wave to suspend both boats at the same height—and you jump. Two things must be considered with a ballerina’s precision: the timing of your jump and the placement of your feet. The RHIB is packed with a steering console and a communications console, and if you plant your feet in the wrong place you’ll twist your ankle, break a leg, or jam your shin between the ship and the RHIB.

There are essential truths about boat transfers. One of them is that when you’re on a deep-sea expedition like this, it’s crucial to move scientists and technicians from one ship to the other. On previous expeditions, when the weather was good, I’ve seen as many as 20 people move back and forth each day. Another truth is that you don’t just make one transfer—you make four. At the beginning of the day, you make one to get off your ship and another to get on the other ship. At the end of the day, probably in the dead of night when you’re exhausted, you make two more. Thus, your first transfer is fraught with consequences.

I waited for the RHIB to come alongside. Sako Palandjian—one of the world’s best RHIB drivers—was at the helm. He matched the speed of his boat with ours, and Joseph Harvey, a muscular young electronics specialist in his early thirties, stood at the edge of our ship and waited for a wave to bring both craft to the same height. It never happened. After a few long seconds, it was clear that the two boats and mother ocean were wildly out of synch. So Joseph did what any determined young man would do—he dove into the RHIB like an NFL lineman recovering a fumble. His left shoulder went over the pontoon first, his body went next, and his feet followed.

It was my turn. I stepped up to the edge of the boat, looked at Joseph in the bottom of the RHIB and at the uneven series of seven-foot (two-meter) swells coming our way. I locked eyes with my buddy Sako and thought I saw him shake his head. Then I did what any alpha coward would do—stepped back and gave Sako a big smile and a military salute. He gunned the RHIB and took off.

I’ve been working on and under the sea for almost 50 years and know a few things about fear. Like the flame of a trick candle, she can be extinguished but always appears, bright and burning when you least expect her. After you’ve made her your friend, it’s best to take her advice.

Written by Dr. Joe MacInnis

Photograph by Joe MacInnis