At 88, Canadian undersea explorer Joe MacInnis looks back on a career filled with remarkable encounters beneath the waves. From getting snagged on a telephone wire while visiting the Titanic wreck to being the first to see the sunken Edmund Fitzgerald, MacInnis has experienced the ocean’s power firsthand.
MacInnis, a doctor, diver and writer, says shipwrecks have taught him about mortality. “Death is coming for us, but it gives life an unexpected beauty and a deep sense of urgency,” he said from his Toronto home. He describes the ocean as “the greatest of all teachers”.
His achievements include being the first to dive at the North Pole, building the Sub-Igloo polar dive station, and filming narwhal, bowhead and beluga whales underwater. He also took former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau and King Charles (then Prince of Wales) on Arctic dives.
MacInnis was involved in the 1985 discovery of the Titanic and later joined a Canadian-Russian expedition to film a documentary there. During one dive, he and Russian pilot Anatoly Sagalevich were briefly trapped atop the ship by a telephone wire. He believes such international collaborations helped ease Cold War tensions.
In 1980, he led an expedition that found HMS Breadalbane, a British ship lost in 1853 while searching for Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated expedition. The wreck became the northernmost ever discovered at the time.
