Avatar director James Cameron explores the Curasub - a new submersible designed in Vancouver.Handout/ The Globe and Mail
Deep-sea experts brought together by film director James Cameron to discuss the devastating Gulf of Mexico spill debated engineering fixes and the need for monitoring of shallow waters around the spill, Phil Nuytten said on Thursday.
"Everybody in the world has seen the damage to the wetlands, but what no one has seen yet is the damage that's being done underwater," Mr. Nuytten said, adding that shrimp, crab and oyster fisheries depend on shallow reefs in the Gulf.
Mr. Nuytten, founder of North Vancouver-based Nuytco Research, was among a group of about 23 people who convened in Washington on Tuesday to brainstorm engineering and environmental strategies in connection with the spill.
The session was convened by Mr. Cameron, who has worked with many of the leading companies in the relatively small world of deep-sea industry, manufacturing and research. The United States Environmental Protection Agency provided space for the session, but no EPA staff attended the meeting, Mr. Cameron said at a technology industry conference on Wednesday.
"This had nothing to do with Hollywood. For 22 years, I've been working with a number, if not most, of the top people in the very small deep submergence community," Mr. Cameron said at the All Things Digital conference on Wednesday in California.
"Over the last few weeks, I've watched as we all have, with growing sort of horror and heartache watching what is happening in the Gulf and thinking, those morons don't know what they're doing,'" he said, explaining what led to his putting the brainstorming session together.
Mr. Cameron said he'd contacted BP a few weeks ago, but was politely rebuffed.
The company "could not have been more gracious, but they basically said, 'we've got this,'" Mr. Cameron said during the interview, posted online Wednesday.
The government should have its own system to monitor the spill, he said.
"If you are not monitoring it independently, you are asking the perpetrator to give you the video of the crime scene."