Of four teams racing to get a submarine to the deepest spot in the world’s oceans, that of film director James Cameron is closest to success and may dive to the Mariana Trench within weeks. It is the lowest point in the world’s oceans and one of the most forbidding spots on the planet, cloaked in cold, darkness and enduring mystery. Inhabited by organisms that resemble some of the earliest life-forms, it is deeper than Mount Everest is tall, with access so risky and complex that it has had just two human visitors since its formation nine million years ago. Now, in what could be the culmination of a so-called “race to inner space”, Hollywood director James Cameron may be poised to dash the hopes of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Oceanic team of being the first 21st-century aquanaut to reach Challenger Deep, the nethermost location in any of the world’s oceans. America’s civil submarine construction community is abuzz with word that the 57-year-old Canadian film-maker is preparing to make a treacherous solo descent of the nearly 36,000ft deep abyss, located in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, within weeks.
