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Telescope: Dr. Joe MacInnis

Broadcast Date: March 23, 1971

"My love of the sea was born in the space of a few hours, and ever since, it's been a continuous commitment," says medical researcher and inventor Dr. Joe MacInnis. Palpably moved by both the science and aesthetics of the underwater world, MacInnis's work and art together aim to capture the possibilities of the deep. Telescope's cameras get a rare look at his watery netherworld as they follow MacInnis to his underwater habitat, Sublimnos, on the icy bottom of Georgian Bay, as well as through brilliant tropical waters and even beneath the Arctic ice on a night dive.

Telescope: Dr. Joe MacInnis

• Joe MacInnis grew up in Toronto. He graduated from medical school at the University of Toronto in 1962, just as a boom in underwater medical research began. In the 1960s, he became medical director of Edwin Link's Man-In Sea Project and worked as a medical consultant to the United States Navy SEA LAB program. In 1967, he also created his own company, Underwater Research and over the past 40 years, he has logged more than 5,000 hours below the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.

• MacInnis led the first team of scientists to dive beneath the ice at the North Pole and was among the first dive to HMS Titanic. In 1996, he teamed up with movie director James Cameron for the Imax film Aliens of the Deep.

• Dr. Joe MacInnis has 10 books to his credit, including Fitzgerald's Storm: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald , Breathing Underwater and Titanic in a New Light. He holds a number of honorary degrees and was invested with the Order of Canada in 1976.

Telescope: Dr. Joe MacInnis

Medium: Television

Program: Telescope

Broadcast Date: March 23, 1971

Guest(s): Gerald Gladstone, Dr. Joe MacInnnis

Host: Ken Cavanagh

Duration: 22:49

Underwater footage courtesy Undersea Research/Dr Joe MacInnis. Underwater night footage courtesy Robert Ryan Cinematography. Arctic footage courtesy NFB. Space photographs courtesy NASA.

Last updated:
April 4, 2008