Avatar director named National Geographic explorer

Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron achieved a teenage dream Thursday as he added the title of National Geographic explorer to prestigious awards he has received, including Oscars for blockbuster movies like Avatar and Titanic. "Based on where I thought I'd be as a teenager, being named an explorer is a great honor and as amazing an outcome as being an Academy Award-winning director," Cameron told AFP after he and Spanish marine ecologist Enric Sala were inducted into the small circle of National Geographic explorers. As a teen, Cameron said, "I could think of nothing better than to be an ocean explorer." "In fact, at the age of 16, living landlocked in a small town in Canada, 500 miles (800 kilometers) from the ocean, I got certified to scuba dive," Cameron said. "I didn't even see an ocean for two more years. I was scuba-diving in a river but it didn't matter -- I had set my foot down that path and the end of the path -- or certainly a milestone -- is today." As a National Geographic explorer in residence, Cameron will pilot a one-man submarine down to depths as deep as 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) below sea level, exploring "part of the ocean that's never been explored by humans and has only been very very briefly glimpsed by robotic eyes," he said. Cameron is helping to build the mini-submarine that will descend into the dark depths of the sea, and in June next year plans to be one of two men who separately will pilot the single-seater sub to the depths of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. The submersible Cameron is developing would get to the bottom of the trench, which includes the deepest point in the world's oceans, around 11,000 meters (nearly 36,000 feet) below sea level, six to seven times faster than most manned submersibles, which descend at a rate of around 100 feet per minute. "Our goal is to be on the bottom in less than an hour so that we can spend six or seven hours on the bottom doing science, taking images, taking core samples, discovering new species." British billionaire Richard Branson also has a project to pilot a "flying" mini-submarine down to the furthest depths of all the world's oceans. But that project is aimed at setting depth records in every ocean of the world, while Cameron's goal is to do "exploration, science and imaging" on the sea floor, and produce a documentary for National Geographic.