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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Leyland Cecco in Toronto

A diving prince, sunken treasure and snared by the Titanic: Joe MacInnis on his ‘rip-roaring’ life as an ocean adventurer

Portrait of Joe MacInnis in a living room with photographs of sealife on the wall.
The undersea explorer Joe MacInnis at home in Toronto. The Canadian helped discover the wreck of the Titanic and was the first person to dive in the north pole. Photograph: Cole Burston/The Guardian

Joe MacInnis admits there are simply too many places to begin telling the story of life in the ocean depths. At 88, the famed Canadian undersea explorer, has many decades to draw on. There was the time he and a Russian explorer and deep-water pilot, Anatoly Sagalevich, were snagged by a telephone wire strung from the pilot house of the Titanic, trapping the pair two and a half miles below the surface.

Another might be the moment he and his team stared in disbelief through a porthole window at the Edmund Fitzgerald, the 222-metre (729ft) ship that vanished 50 years ago into the depths of Lake Superior, so quickly that none of the crew could issue a call for help. MacInnis and his team were the first humans to lay eyes on the wreck.

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