James Cameron to cast himself into the heart of the ocean, or the abyss, or whatever James Cameron joke you prefer

Bored with giving speeches about 3-D and taking money baths, this week James Cameron sought new adventures and faraway places where people couldn’t ask him about Avatar 2 by traveling five miles beneath the ocean, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, all in a 43-inch-wide craft officially dubbed the Deepsea Challenger and unofficially dubbed the Fuck You, Richard Branson. And while that alone was enough to break the world depth record for solo undersea travel, Cameron is already planning on topping that later this month by diving seven miles down into the forbidding Challenger Deep in the western Pacific—a feat only achieved once before in 1960, in a vehicle that barely survived and that lasted only 20 minutes before resurfacing. It also did not have any famous directors on it.

You’ll be able to follow Cameron’s voyage at this website, while Cameron’s co-sponsor the National Geographic Society says that not only will he be collecting important samples for scientific research, he’ll be filming the whole thing for two eventual documentaries, thus continuing a long tradition of James Cameron films set at sea like The Abyss, Titanic, and the upcoming Avatar sequels. Of course, that’s what National Geographic would have us believe. A more logical explanation would be that James Cameron, bored of lording over dry land, is expanding his dominion to become Fish Emperor, and soon even the world’s undiscovered eels shall know his might.