LOS ANGELES — Ralph Bradshaw White, whose film footage of the Titanic provided the world with its first look at the underwater wreckage of the sunken ship, has died.

White, who grew up in Hawai'i, died Feb. 4 from complications of an aortic aneurysm at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, his daughter Krista Few told the Los Angeles Times. He was 66.

The explorer and documentary cameraman was a member of the French-American expedition that discovered the remains of the Titanic in 1985.

White returned to the site more than 30 times to film and recover artifacts from the ship's wreckage. He boasted that he spent more time on the Titanic than its captain had.

"There's something truly magical about her lying down there, still beckoning after all these years," White told USA Today in 2000. "But I don't really know why the Titanic has such an allure for me. Does anyone ever understand why they fall in love?"

Footage he captured of the ship appeared in James Cameron's 1997 Oscar-winning film "Titanic" and in the early 1990s IMAX documentary "Titanica."

The footage was filmed using deep-ocean imaging technology, powerful lighting systems and deep-diving submersibles that allowed White's cameras to penetrate the darkness 12,000 feet below the ocean's surface, where the doomed oceanliner came to rest.

As a contract cameraman for National Geographic, White also searched for the Loch Ness monster, filmed wild horses, whales and sharks and filmed the 153-year-old wreck of the Breadalbane under the Arctic ice cap.

"I was born an adult in search of a childhood," he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1998. "And I have been very successful at that."

White was born Aug. 28, 1941, in San Bernardino and grew up on the Big Island. He learned to parachute as a Marine Corpsman and served with a reconnaissance unit in Vietnam.

He opened a parachuting school in Lancaster after his discharge from the Marines in 1966 and went on to work as a free-fall cameraman for the TV show Ripcord.

White is survived by Few, his son Randy Pixley of Atlanta and his fiance Rosaly Lopes.

A memorial service was held Tuesday.