James Cameron: How deep was his dive?

When movie director James Cameron’s specially-designed submarine settled in at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean, he became the third person in history to explore deepest part of the ocean.

Cameron’s cramped sub took more than two-and-a-half hours to dive almost 11 kilometres. That just over 14 minutes per kilometre – or about one-third the pace of a middle of the pack marathoner.

The pressure on the sub was immense – comparable to three SUVs resting on a toe. The super-strong sub shrank seven centimetres under that pressure, Cameron said.

How deep is 11 kilometres under the surface of the ocean?

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It’s about 27 times deeper than the deepest point of Lake Superior, which goes down 406 metres at its deepest. Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world, based on surface area.

It’s also 6.7 times deeper than the deepest point of Lake Baikal, the deepest freshwater lake in the world – 1,642 metres at its deepest.

As Cameron descended, he could’ve piled up the equivalent of 19 CN Towers – and most of a 20th.

He dropped the equivalent of a little more than 42 per cent of the Boston Marathon route – stopping well short of the famed “Screech Tunnel”, where the students and faculty of Wellesley’s all-girls private school scream their support at the passing athletes, giving many runners a much-needed boost, before the tough part of the race begins. Cameron didn’t say whether he needed an adrenalin boost to keep on diving.

If Cameron’s dive was an ascent instead, he would’ve gone beyond the first layer of the atmosphere – the troposphere, which contains about 80 per cent of the mass of the atmosphere. He would’ve gone another two kilometres into the next layer – the stratosphere. It’s a little less than the cruising altitude of commercial jetliners, which is about 12,000 metres.

The closest landmark on the surface of the Earth that compares to the depth of Cameron’s dive is Mount Everest, at 8848 metres. Cameron’s dive was the equivalent of almost 1.25 Everests.