We Are Canada·Video

This Newfoundlander is forging a new frontier of ocean discovery

He's in deep. 33-year-old Adam Gobi is designing new, submersible cameras to explore the ocean's unknown depths.

'We were seeing things that no one had ever seen before.'

This Newfoundlander is forging a new frontier of ocean discovery

8 years ago
Duration 11:47
33-year-old Adam Gobi is designing new cameras to explore the oceans depths.

In 2012, James Cameron made a record-breaking solo dive to the deepest point known on earth — The Mariana Trench in the western Pacific.

To successfully capture his voyage, the Oscar-winning Canadian filmmaker needed a very special 3D camera. He got his pioneering device from a Canadian team lead by Newfoundland born and bred Adam Gobi.

"To build a submersible to take a man down to the deepest point on earth, to one of the harshest environments in the world, is like the ultimate engineering problem," says 33-year-old Gobi. "Every time we put that sub in the water, we were seeing things that no one had ever seen before."

Following the success of those dives, Gobi set up his own company, SULIS Subsea, to continue to build ground-breaking cameras that forge a new frontier of ocean discovery. And he did it back home, in Newfoundland.

There's 95 per cent left of the ocean to explore, and that's what really drives me.- Adam Gobi

Gobi is one of a new generation of passionate change-makers profiled in CBC's new series We Are Canada. Watch the series Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBC and online