When Hans Hartman, a civil engineer, attempted to film the ocean depths in 1917, he pioneered what would become the first deep-sea ROV, or remotely operated vehicle. During an era of silent movies and wartime U-boats, Hartman’s ambitious invention—a 1,500-pound electric, submarine camera—could be lowered to a depth of 1,000 feet to capture images of sunken ships and submerged treasures. Despite featuring a gyroscope for stability, a motorized propeller for controlled rotation, and an innovative light source, as Popular Science explained, it had a serious limitation: The hulking apparatus had to be operated blindly from a ship’s deck, which meant it was impossible for the camera’s operator to see what they were filming until the footage was viewed later.
Undeterred, Hartman pushed further. In 1925, Popular Science showcased his next breakthrough—a cylindrical apparatus (seen above) attached to a ship by a cable, housing a submersible, motor-driven camera, as well as enough room for a person who could control the camera, or communicate with crew members nearby to aid with various underwater missions, such as salvaging. The vertical, tin-can-like submarine, equipped with porthole windows and a powerful spotlight, allowed “the operator to go down into the water with a camera and photograph whatever he chooses.” While Hartman initially set his sights on a sunken Roman city in the Mediterranean, his motion-picture-taking craft could reach depths of 2,000 feet to film marine life with unprecedented clarity. A century ago, Hartman’s innovations established the foundation for a field that would evolve from cumbersome surface-controlled contraptions to today’s sophisticated AI-powered autonomous submersibles.
Hartman’s contributions came at a time of rapid transformation in photography, motion pictures, and ocean exploration. Though Thomas Edison had patented his Kinetoscope more than two decades earlier, motion-picture technologies—such as the 35mm film and cabinet-size cameras used for filming—remained finicky and unreliable, forcing early filmmakers to shoot in controlled studio environments. It would be roughly a decade after Edison’s 1891 invention before outdoor scenes became possible, like the famous footage of the Wright Brothers’ first flight.
As motion-picture technology progressed, parallel developments in submarine warfare technology, industrial shipping expansion, and a growing interest in marine archaeology created demand for more effective ways to document the ocean’s depths.
Jacques Cousteau emerged as perhaps the most influential 20th-century figure in deep-sea exploration and underwater filmmaking. In the 1940s, Cousteau’s co-invention of the Aqualung (SCUBA) revolutionized diving and underwater exploration. His 1959 Diving Saucer—nicknamed “Denise”—could carry a crew of two and dive as deep as 350 meters, remaining submerged for up to five hours. Cousteau and his team captured spellbinding footage that culminated in the landmark documentary series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1968–1976).
Building on Cousteau’s legacy and the public fascination he’d created for marine life, shipwrecks, and ancient ruins, filmmakers continued to dive deeper. Haunting images of the Titanic first made headlines in 1985 when Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s ROV, Argo, equipped with high-resolution cameras and sonar, located the wreck at a staggering depth of 12,500 feet.
In the 21st century, what’s an otherworldly conquest without billionaires vying to be first? The Titanic’s ghostly allure has drawn numerous ultra-wealthy, deep-sea enthusiasts to its resting place in privately owned submarines, including the tragic implosion in 2023 of OceanGate’s Titan submersible. Following the 1997 release of his blockbuster film, Titanic, deep-pocketed filmmaker James Cameron returned to the shipwreck’s site numerous times, employing self-designed, innovative ROVs to explore the ship’s interior. His 2003 documentary Ghosts of the Abyss revealed the wreck’s incredibly well-preserved remains.
In 2012, Cameron set a record for the deepest solo dive when he used his personal vessel, the Deepsea Challenger, to explore and film the Mariana Trench at nearly 36,000 feet, about seven miles down. Spying the ocean floor through 9-1/2 inches of glass, his expedition produced some of the most detailed footage ever recorded of Earth’s deepest oceanic trench. With ongoing marine research in the works, Cameron’s fascination with the deep has yielded a new expedition series, OceanXplorers, whose first season debuted in 2024—Cousteau redux?
Today’s deep-sea filmmaking frontier increasingly belongs to AI-driven, autonomous submersibles. What began in 1917 with Hartman’s tethered ROV has evolved into sophisticated AUVs, or autonomous underwater vehicles, like those operated by Schmidt Ocean Institute. From sidling up to underwater volcanoes to exploring hydrothermal vent fields, these underwater robots are the 21st century’s deep-sea filmmakers, conducting unmanned missions to film and collect critical marine data. Such technological leaps have elevated deep-sea documentary filmmaking to extraordinary heights—or depths—with documentaries like BBC’s Blue Planet (2001) and Blue Planet II (2017), establishing new standards for underwater cinematography.
Researchers and filmmakers now deploy self-operating sail drones with high-resolution cameras and real-time streaming capabilities, enabling continuous monitoring of deep-sea ecosystems that supports both marine conservation and scientific discovery.
Among today’s chief innovators, marine ecologist and filmmaker David Gruber stands out for his groundbreaking work with biofluorescent imaging, which has revealed how various marine species emit light in ways previously invisible to the human eye. His remarkable footage has been featured in major scientific studies and documentaries.
From Hartman’s pioneering electric cameras to today’s AI-controlled AUVs, deep-sea filmmaking has come a long way in a century. What began as an experimental tool for documenting shipwrecks and uncovering ancient treasures has evolved into a vital means of exploring Earth’s final frontier—the vast and mysterious ocean that envelops more than 70 percent of its surface, gave birth to life, and gives our planet its distinctive blue hue among the cosmos.
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