The Hollywood director James Cameron is donating the craft that he built and last year rode into the sea's deepest spot to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, as part of a new collaboration meant to speed ocean exploration, the partners announced early Tuesday.
The undersea craft, which cost Mr. Cameron, the maker of hit movies like "Titanic" and "Avatar," roughly $10 million of his own money, will be used mainly to aid the design of advanced vehicles and technologies, rather than for routinely carrying scientists into the sea's depths.
The announcement comes on the first anniversary of Mr. Cameron's solo dive through the dark waters of the western Pacific. Down nearly seven miles, he and his torpedolike vehicle came to rest at the bottom of the Challenger Deep — the lowest point of the Mariana Trench, the deepest of the many seabed recesses that crisscross the globe. (A Twitter message that was posted from his dive was hailed as one of the top social media events of 2012.)
No other vehicle can carry people down so deep, and ocean engineers praise the craft, which was designed by Mr. Cameron and a team in Australia, for its innovative features. Most notably, its vertical design lets it dive rapidly and sets it apart from the world's submersibles and submarines, which typically look like underwater ships and are optimized for horizontal travel.
"It's the ideal outcome," Mr. Cameron said Monday in an interview about the new partnership. The main goal, he added, "is to get the technology out there, to capitalize on the engineering advances to the highest possible degree."
He said the vehicle, known as Deepsea Challenger, should arrive at Woods Hole, in Massachusetts, sometime around June.
Mr. Cameron, who will become an adviser to Woods Hole, added that the craft will stay in operational readiness for the foreseeable future. Its future dives, he added, will depend on scientific interest, as well as the availability of money to pay for ancillary costs, like mother ships.
"Jim's record-breaking dive was inspirational," Susan K. Avery, the president and director of Woods Hole, said in a statement. "Partnerships such as this one represent a new paradigm and will accelerate the progress of ocean science and technology development."
The oceanographic institution, located on Cape Cod, has long pioneered the development of deep-diving vehicles. Alvin, the world's most famous craft for carrying people into the oceanic depths, was the first submersible to illuminate the sunken Titanic and the ecosystems that thrive in the ocean's icy darkness.
Today, however, submersibles from other nations can dive deeper — 3.7 miles down for France and Russia, 4 miles for Japan and 4.3 miles for China.
Oceanographers say Mr. Cameron's fresh ideas could help the United States recapture some of its pioneering spirit.
"I have tremendous respect for him," Andy Bowen, director of the National Deep Submergence Facility at Woods Hole, said in an interview. "He's a fantastic thinker. I admire his command of the details and the way he can see the larger picture and combine those in a unique way."
Mr. Cameron's success is part of an emerging trend to privatization in science and exploration, and his donation to Woods Hole illustrates a sharp reversal in how innovative technologies once found wide application.
For decades, NASA and the military financed research that resulted in breakthroughs, like computer chips, that would "spin off" into the private sector. But today, advances in the private sector often "spin in" to government bodies. Woods Hole is a private institution but works closely with federal agencies.
Mr. Cameron made his vehicle speedy to maximize its bottom time. Its solo passenger can explore the dark seabed for hours, taking pictures and extracting samples.
In an interview, the filmmaker said he was eager to dive again in the Deepsea Challenger, particularly to an area of the western Pacific known as the Sirena Deep, more than six miles down.
There, his team last year spotted a rocky outcropping covered with bizarre clumps of microorganisms known as microbial mats — life in the middle of nowhere.
"It's what always happens at the end of an expedition," he said. "You get a glimpse through the door that you have to go through the next time."
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