SAN FRANCISCO — The first thing James Cameron saw 7 miles below
the sea was human-made: tracks from a remotely operated vehicle.
"When I got to the bottom, I saw skid marks from the ROV,"
Cameron said Tuesday here at the annual meeting of the American
Geophysical Union, referring to a 2009 survey by the Japanese
ROV Kaiko. Scientific results of the film director's expedition
to the Mariana Trench were presented at the meeting this week,
and Cameron and the researchers described the highlights to a
packed crowd. Cameron reported a new, corrected depth for his
landing — 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) — which beats by five feet
(1.5 m) the record set by U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques
Piccard in 1960 at the same spot. However, "because the error
(calculating the depth) on Don's dive is much greater, we're
just going to have to call it a tie," Cameron said. Cameron's
Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain
Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean
between Jan. 31 and Apr