It is by visiting the depths of the ocean and encountering some of the strangest life forms that one can better imagine what future explorers may someday find on other planets.

The 3D film Aliens Of The Deep, currently showing at the Imax theatre in St Julians, reveals creatures so deep in the ocean and so strange looking, they seem surreal.

They are abundant and most bizarre, including six-foot-tall worms with blood-red plumes, white crabs and an absolutely astonishing cluster of blind, white shrimp, all competing to find the right location in the flow of superheated water. No wonder academy award-winning director, deep ocean adventurer and space exploration visionary James Cameron, of Titanic fame, admits that the film is more exciting than any Hollywood special effects movie.

Mr Cameron teams up with a marine biologist, an astrobiologist, a planetary scientist and a geological environmental specialist to help the audience consider the correlations between life under water and the life we may one day find in outer space.

This is the second Imax film by Mr Cameron to be released here. Ghosts of the Abyss was screened 2003.

Aliens Of The Deep is a KRS release.

www.imax.com.mt