The Gruesome History of the First Underwater Film

Popular Science unveils the forgotten and lost footage capturing the very gruesome history of the first time the deep sea had ever been recorded. The filmmaker J.E. Williamson used his own design of a photosphere, an airtight container that was dropped deep under water for the specific task of filming the scene of the underwater world. The movie itself was senselessly harsh, a dead horse was hung to attract a shark, a diver would then go in and kill the shark for a breathtaking on-camera battle. The first shark was killed out of camera range, so Williamson got in the ocean again and killed another shark to record on camera. When he returned to the photosphere to capture more footage of the unfortunate creature’s lifeless body. This video is now known as “Terrors of the Deep”.

How strange that the first moving images recorded of this little-seen world were of a dead horse lowered upside down as bait for a shark. Not only to lure the animal to the camera, but to lure it to its death…That violence was preferred over beauty…J.E. promised his financiers a fight between man and shark. …PopSci found the lost and forgotten first underwater film. It’s a story too strange and horrifying to be fiction…