"Titanic" director and avid explorer James Cameron wishes he had been "more vocal" about his safety concerns regarding the OceanGate submersible that imploded in the depths of the North Atlantic this week, killing the five men aboard.
Cameron, who has made 33 voyages of his own to view the Titanic site over the years, spoke to NBC News about his worries over the submersible, known as Titan.
The U.S. Coast Guard said on June 22 that they believed everyone on board was killed when the vessel experienced a "catastrophic implosion" on a voyage to the wreckage of the Titanic.
"OceanGate shouldn't have been doing what it was doing, I think that's pretty clear," Cameron said. "I wish I had been more vocal about that, but I think I was unaware that they weren't certified because I wasn't really studying it. I wasn't really interested."
OceanGate's co-founder, Guillermo Söhnlein, defended the company against Cameron's comments in an interview on June 23 on BBC Radio 4's "Today" show.
"People keep equating certification with safety and are ignoring the 14 years of development of the Titan sub,” he said, according to the BBC.
“Any expert who weighs in on this, including Mr. Cameron, will also admit that they were not there for the design of the sub, for the engineering of the sub, for the building of the sub and certainly not for the rigorous test program the sub went through.”
Emmy award-winning writer and "Simpsons" producer Mike Reiss, who took a trip on the submersible last year, said on a podcast that the waiver form he had to sign before boarding "mentions possible death three times on the first page.”
He also described malfunctions with the sonar, computer and lights.
The company wrote in a 2019 blog post called "Why Isn't Titan Classed?" that the craft was not approved or certified by any regulatory body.
OceanGate wrote that the reason was because it would take years for that to happen, and "bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation."
Cameron, 68, said he was contacted by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was one of the five men who died on the Titan, about coming out for a voyage.
"I wasn't interested," Cameron said.
Cameron highlighted the parallel between the Titan tragedy and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which came after the ship struck an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean.
"It's just tragic and it's horrific and it's unnecessary," Cameron said. "And by the way, it's not lost on me as somebody who's studied the meaning of Titanic, it's greater meaning to us historically and societally, that it's about warnings that were ignored."
Cameron noted that a group of people who work in the submersible industry sent Rush a letter from the Marine Technology Society in 2018 expressing "unanimous concern" regarding the Titan.
"I don't want to say it blindsided the community because there was a lot of concern," Cameron said.
The letter urged Rush to have the submersible certified by a third party to avoid outcomes that could be "minor to catastrophic."
"Literally the word 'catastrophe' is in the letter," Cameron said.
Cameron also questioned the materials used to make the Titan.
Post a Comment