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Film-makers Mike deGruy and Andrew Wight killed in helicopter smash

This article is more than 11 years oldTitanic director James Cameron pays tribute to his deep-sea brothers who had accomplished 'extraordinary things'

The American cinematographer Mike deGruy and Australian television writer-producer Andrew Wight have been killed in a helicopter crash in eastern Australia.

Police said two people – a pilot and a passenger – died on Saturday when their aircraft crashed soon after takeoff near Nowra, 97 miles south of Sydney, but did not immediately release the victims' identities. ABC News reported that Wight had been piloting the helicopter.

The pair's employers, National Geographic and the Titanic director, James Cameron, confirmed the victims' identities, adding that "the deep-sea community had lost two of its finest" with the deaths of the underwater documentary specialists.

David Bennett, president of Australia's South Coast Recreational Flying Club, said the men had set off to film a documentary when they crashed.

DeGruy, 60, of Santa Barbara, California, had won multiple Emmy and Bafta awards for cinematography. Wight, 52, from Melbourne, was the writer-producer of the 3D film Sanctum, which took $100m (£63m) at the box office and was Australian cinema's biggest hit of 2010.

DeGruy spent 30 years producing and directing documentaries about the ocean. An accomplished diver and submarine pilot who spent many hours filming deep beneath the sea, he was the director of undersea photography for Cameron's Last Mysteries of the Titanic, National Geographic and Cameron said in a statement.

"Mike and Andrew were like family to me," the director added. "They were my deep-sea brothers and both were true explorers who did extraordinary things and went places no human being has been."

This article was amended on 6 February 2012. The original said that Nowra is 97 miles north of Sydney. This has been corrected.

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