Joe MacInnis fell in love with the undersea world during his first scuba dive at 17, when he explored the reef systems off Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1954.
“It’s filled with these extraordinary creatures and sunlight and shadows,” MacInnis told The Current’s host Matt Galloway. “It is another world.”
“The feeling I [had] of this connection with something ancient and mysterious and infinite [has] never left me.”
Now 88, MacInnis has spent a lifetime exploring the world’s water, logging 6,000 hours beneath the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans. He also helped director James Cameron do research for his blockbuster film Titanic.
For his pioneering contributions to undersea science, MacInnis was awarded the Order of Canada in 1976.
Building a career underwater
Raised in Toronto, MacInnis initially went to medical school, attending the University of Toronto and graduating in 1962.
But he says the ocean beckoned, and that he was “very fortunate” to come of age during what he calls a golden era for ocean science, when advances in diving science and technology were unfolding at a rapid pace.
By combining his medical training with his passion for being underwater, MacInnis found his way back to the sea, and became a consultant on the U.S. Navy’s Sealab project. The program demonstrated that humans could live and dive underwater for extended periods, with MacInnis specializing in the health and safety of divers.
A few years later, in 1969, MacInnis came back to Canada and helped Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau draft the country’s first national ocean policy.
He also built Sublimnos, Canada’s first underwater research station, beneath Lake Huron, which allowed scientists to conduct research on fish habitats, water algae, sediment and currents.
Another milestone followed in 1972, when MacInnis led the team that built the world’s first manned underwater station in the Arctic Ocean, known as Sub-Igloo, and became the first scientist to dive beneath the North Pole.
“I had this extraordinary sensation of being able to turn around, 360 degrees, very slowly, and sensing the ocean in all directions — the Pacific in one direction, the Atlantic in the other,” said MacInnis.
Through their Arctic undersea expeditions, MacInnis and his team developed breathing devices and protective suits that allowed divers to work safely in frigid waters. They also filmed narwhal, bowhead and beluga whales for the first time, 965 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.
MacInnis also welcomed notable guests on dives at the time, including Pierre Trudeau and King Charles, who was Prince of Wales at the time.
Canadian research scientist and underwater explorer Joe MacInnis recalls going deep under the Arctic ice in 1975 with King Charles, who was Prince of Wales at the time. MacInnis hopes Charles’s reverence for the environment continues during his reign.
From historic wrecks to a Hollywood collaboration
In 1980, MacInnis led an expedition that found the Breadalbane shipwreck, a British merchant vessel that sank beneath the ice of the Northwest Passage in 1853. The ship’s hull was found intact, with two of its masts still standing.
He later also made “some extraordinary descents through crystal clear water of Lake Superior” where he laid eyes on the wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a ship that vanished 50 years ago, taking all 29 crew members with it.
“It was a sacred place,” said MacInnis. “I appreciate the technology that takes you there, but the story that is there has to be respected.”
He says he felt a similar reverence in 1985, when he served as an adviser to the team that discovered the wreck of the Titanic.
MacInnis made multiple dives to it in submersibles.
“There was a strange organic beauty to the Titanic that I’ve never forgotten,” he said.
Early on, MacInnis became a mentor to acclaimed filmmaker James Cameron, whom he fondly calls Jim, years before Cameron helmed a film that would win 11 Oscars.
They first connected when Cameron was 14. Cameron had seen Sublimnos displayed outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto before it was deployed.
Soon after, Cameron wrote to MacInnis requesting the station’s blueprints so he could build one himself. MacInnis sent him the designs.
“I never could have imagined that I’d be a filmmaker in Hollywood. I never could have imagined that I would actually work with deep submergence work, that I’d dive to Titanic,” Cameron recalled at a Royal Canadian Geographical Society event in 2023.
“But when you have that moment of empowerment — somebody believes in you — all of a sudden, the switch is thrown in your head and you believe it’s possible.”
The two have remained friends ever since and have worked together on many film and undersea expeditions, including one that helped Cameron reach the Titanic.
After working with the team that made the documentary film Titanica, MacInnis invited Cameron to the world premiere and introduced him to the Russian submersible pilots who had taken part in the dive.
Cameron later hired the same pilots to take him to the ship before making his 1997 film Titanic, which earned him an Academy Award for best director.
Before making his blockbuster film, Cameron dove 12 times to the sunken ship, says MacInnis.
“He wanted to familiarize himself with the sacredness of the place and he wanted that experience to make it possible to create a really true and authentic story of the sinking.”
Lessons on taking the unbeaten path
Going where few have gone is a “thick adrenaline event,” MacInnis says.
During his last dive to the Titanic in 1991, MacInnis and the pilot became trapped about four kilometres below the surface when their submersible became snagged on a telephone wire strung from the ship’s pilot house.
“My heart rate went up to triple digits,” MacInnis said. “About 30 minutes later, the longest year and a half of my life, he was able to wiggle the sub back and we went up to the sunlight.”
MacInnis says that fear can be a helpful companion. Losing his father at a young age, he says, shaped his perspective on death, leaving him unafraid of it and more aware of life’s urgency and the importance of accepting fear rather than resisting it.
Yet through his extensive time in the ocean, and his work as a physician witnessing and treating ocean-related injuries, he says he can only feel humbled by the sea.
“My respect for the ocean has turned me into an alpha coward with a PhD in fear,” said MacInnis. “My time in the ocean … [has] given me enormous respect and reverence for Mother Ocean.”
MacInnis says he wants to “continue the voyage of exploration [and] discovery.”
Through projects such as a memoir and a documentary, he hopes to reflect on his “extraordinary life” and use those experiences to make a positive impact on the world.
