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20 NEWSWEEK.COM OCTOBER 18, 2019
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Director James Cameron
became interested in
submersibles and deep sea
exploration after doing dives
for the making of Titanic.Oceanic Proportions
Two explorers dueling over the record for diving to
Earth’s deepest point reminds us what we don’t know about
our oceans—and the troubling data in what we doBYHANNAH OSBORNE
@hannah__osbornein 2012, james cameron,
creator of Avatar and Titanic,
became the first person to reach the
deepest part of the ocean on a solo
dive. When he arrived at the Chal-
lenger Deep—the deepest spot on
Earth at 7 miles below sea level—he
spent hours mapping the region and
taking photos and samples.
“As human beings, we’re drawn to
absolutes—the deepest, the highest,
the coldest, the farthest,” he says. “My
logical justification was if we could
build a sub to go to the deepest place,
it could dive anywhere and open up
the entire ocean to exploration. And
as a storyteller and curious monkey, I
just wanted to see what was there.”
And over the following years, and
subsequent dives to the surrounding
Mariana Trench, it has become very
apparent what is down there. Plastic.
“Our so-called civiliza-
tion is using the ocean as
its toilet,” Cameron says.
“Unless this changes, and
fast, ocean ecosystems
are going to continue
their rapid collapse.”
In August, Texas investor, and now
explorer, Victor Vescovo completed a
dive to the Challenger Deep, located
about 200 miles southwest of Guam in
the Pacific Ocean, and found a plastic
bag and candy wrappers. Microplas-
tics—bits of plastic measuring less
than 5 mm—have also been ingested
by creatures living in the Mariana
Trench. In research published in Feb-
ruary, a team of scientists discovered
all 10 of the minute crustaceans they
sampled had plastic fibers in their
digestive tracts.
Yet it was Vescovo’s claim that he’d
broken Cameron’s deepest solo dive
record by reaching 35,853 feet that
made headlines. Cameron contests
this, claiming the Challenger Deep
floor is flat and the depth discrepancy
was caused by different equipment.
But, more problematic, he says, is that
the focus on diving records is detract-
ing from more important issues: the
current health of our oceans and a
lack of scientific deep sea research.
Despite decades of environmen-
tal studies, the impact of plastic and
other forms of pollution on oceans
are not entirely understood. Earlier
this year, the World Health Organi-
zation called for more research into
the effect of microplas-
tics on the environment
and human health, and
initial studies appear to
indicate that ingesting
them—either directly
or indirectly—could
cause inflammation that may lead to
disease. Plastics can also release toxic
substances into the water, which could
potentially impact animal population
sizes by reducing fertility.
But plastic is just one of the prob-
lems facing oceans that have yet to be
fully understood.
“Plastic waste in the ocean is hor-
rific but is only the most prominentof our many deadly waste streams,
which include carbon that’s heating
the atmosphere and making the ocean
acidic, and the run-off nutrients from
all the world’s agriculture, which is
causing anoxic dead zones the size of
countries,” Cameron says.
Oceans, like the rest of the world,
are impacted by the burning of fossil
fuels and the release of greenhouse
gses like carbon dioxide—about 30
percent of which is absorbed by the
sea. This absorption causes ocean acid-
ification, where the pH level is altered
to become more acidic. As a result, it’s
harder for some creatures to form
shells and skeletons and countless
species at the base of the food web can
struggle to survive, which, scientists
say, has the potential to cause huge dis-
ruptions to entire ecosystems. Indeed,