James Cameron, a famous American film director and creator of the Titanic and Avatar, arrived in Irkutsk on a private visit early in the morning on 15 August 2010. He came to Russia on a personal invitation of his friend Anatoly Sagalevich, chairman of the Technical Committee of the Fund for the Protection of Lake Baikal. During his trip to Baikal, James Cameron is accompanied by Michael McDowell, a famous Australian explorer, a member of the Arctic 2007 deepwater expedition, and Maria Wilhelm, the author of Avatar: A Field Guide To Pandora. Upon arrival the guests were invited by Dmitry Mezentsev, Governor of the Irkutsk Region, to have breakfast, which was served on the bank of the Angara River. Lake Baikal greeted everyone with lovely weather – the rough storm and the pouring rain that had been raging the day before the arrival had stopped.

James Cameron who celebrates his first time on Baikal and in Siberia praised the beauty of the local nature. Dmitry Mezentsev in his turn expressed hope that the film director will have a chance to discover an absolutely new species that could serve a base for a new movie. This remark made everyone join in a lively discussion. It is worth mentioning that during the three seasons of the ‘Mirs in Baikal’ expedition the explorers managed to discover a few species of living organisms as yet unknown to science. Among them are spherical structures formed of microorganism colonies that feed on methane.  

Within the next few days James Cameron is planning to take part in the expedition of the MIR deep submergence vessel to the bottom of Baikal. It is by far not his first experience in underwater research activities. During the filming of Titanic the director used MIR submersibles several times to dive over 4,000 meters deep into the Atlantic Ocean.