Hollywood director James Cameron has plunged nearly 11km (seven miles) down to the deepest place in the ocean, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific.

Cameron spent the last few years working in secret with his team of engineers to design and build the craft, which weighs 11 tons, is more than 7m (23ft) long, and able to resist the 1,000 atmospheres of pressure. He describes it as a “vertical torpedo” that slices through the water allowing him a speedy descent.

He intends to release a documentary.