National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence James Cameron explored the deepest point on the surface of the Earth for about three hours on Sunday before resurfacing. Although Cameron’s expedition to the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep location was shorter than planned due to a hydraulic fuel leak in his sub called the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, he was able to get a look at the deepest ocean floor, which he described as bleak. “It looked like the moon,” he said. He didn’t see much in the way of sea life, either. “I didn’t find anything that looked alive to me, other than a few [shrimplike] amphipods in the water,” he said from aboard the research vessel Mermaid Sapphire.

Among the 2.5-story-tall sub’s tools are a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a “slurp gun” for sucking up small sea creatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. Although Cameron had originally planned to collect samples with the sub’s hydraulic arm, the leak made that impossible. Despite the setbacks, Cameron and the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER made history by making the deepest solo dive ever! Cameron, well-known for his films Titanic and Avatar is also an ocean explorer. He dived to the wreckage of the Titanic 33 times.

Read more about James Cameron’s dive on National Geographic News.

Read about the discovery of giant amphipods on News Bites.

See ocean pictures on National Geographic Kids.

Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic