United States Coast Guard (USCG) officials announced Thursday (June 22) they have confirmed the destruction of the OceanGate Explorations submersible Titan as destroyed due to a "catastrophic implosion."
Authorities said the debris field they discovered near the bow of the Titanic was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel." The passengers were identified as OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French deep-sea expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, and British-Pakistani father-and-son tandem Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
All hands aboard have died as the first fatalities in the deep-sea exploration industry.
'Titanic' Director: Titan's Design a Bad Idea
In the aftermath of the announcement, Hollywood film director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron expressed remorse for not sounding the alarm about the flaw in the hull design of the tourist sub. He argued that OceanGate's "arrogance and hubris" was the reason why the expedition to the Titanic failed.
Ever since he heard that the company was attempting to make a submersible with a composite carbon fiber and titanium hull, he was downright skeptical. "I thought it was a horrible idea," he told Reuters. "I wish I'd spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face."
Cameron, widely known for directing the 1997 Oscar-winning film "Titanic," is also part of a very small and close-knit manned underwater vehicle (MUV) industry. He is also a co-owner of the submersible manufacturing firm Triton Submarines, which makes deep-sea subs for research and tourism.
As a deep-sea explorer, he has joined in multiple underwater expeditions to the Titanic. He also went aboard the Deepsea Challenger to dive to Challenger Deep, the earth's deepest point at 10,912m (35,800ft).
Cameron said the industry standard was to make pressure hulls out of contiguous materials like steel, titanium, ceramic, or acrylic, which were better for conducting tests.
"We celebrate innovation, right? But you shouldn't be using an experimental vehicle for paying passengers that aren't themselves deep ocean engineers," he added.
In addition, Cameron found a surreal similarity between the fate of the Titan to the subject of its doomed exploration, the Titanic. For the latter case, Titanic captain Edward Smith was forewarned of massive icebergs across the Atlantic but continued to sail at full speed towards New York before hitting one off the coast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland.
"Here [we] are again," Cameron said. "And at the same place. Now there's one wreck lying next to the other wreck for the same damn reason."
Businessman Reveals He Was Being Convinced by Rush
American businessman and financier Jay Bloom shared on Facebook all of the text messages he received from Rush as a way of convincing him to book a $150,000 trip to the Titanic.
The texts show Rush offering him a discount for the normal $250,000 per seat price, saying it was "safer than flying" or "crossing the street."
"In February, Stockton asked me and my son, Sean, to go with him on the dive to Titanic in May," he said. "I expressed safety concerns, and Stockton told me: 'While there's obviously a risk, it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving. There hasn't been even an injury in 35 years in non-military subs."
Nevertheless, Bloom insisted Rush, who "really believed what he was saying," was "very wrong."
Criticism Mounting Against OceanGate
While the cause of the Titan's implosive disintegration has yet to be determined, Cameron presumed critics were correct to predict a carbon fiber and titanium hull would enable delamination and microscopic water ingress, leading to progressive failure over time.
Other experts in the industry, including a former OceanGate employee, have raised alarms about the submersible's design as early as 2018. However, the company did not address the criticisms or queries about its decision to forgo certification from industry third parties like the American Bureau of Shipping or the European company DNV.
Cameron also told the BBC that OceanGate would not have the Titan certified "because they knew they wouldn't pass."
A classified US Navy acoustic detection system recorded "an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion" in the general vicinity where the Titan was located when communication to its mothership Polar Price was lost.
Cameron said his sources also reported similar information and knew the sub was done for since the news of its disappearance went out, despite him "hoping against hope," his conclusion was wrong. "We got confirmation within an hour that there had been a loud bang at the same time that the sub comms were lost," he added. "I knew what happened. The sub imploded."
OceanGate Co-Founder Responds to Cameron
OceanGate was supposed to be a company that would expand the knowledge and enthusiasm in deep-sea exploration.
In response to Cameron's scathing remarks, OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Soehnlein insisted Rush was not reckless as the "Titanic" director accused the deceased CEO of such.
"He was extremely committed to safety," he told Britain's Times Radio. "He was also extremely diligent about managing risks, and was very keenly aware of the dangers of operating in a deep ocean environment."
Soehnlein started OceanGate Expeditions with Rush in 2009 but has since left the company in 2013. He also insisted he was not involved with the design of the Titan.
Soehnlein also said Cameron himself was asked about "a similar risk" in his dives to the Titanic and the Marianas Trench, further debunking the director's claim of a catastrophic implosion happening as rapidly as a matter of microseconds.
However, he stressed it was too soon to say what really happened to the Titan, and it was "tricky to navigate" to formulate global regulations for deep-sea submersibles. He also stated that deep-sea exploration should continue despite the Titan tragedy.
"Just like with space exploration, the best way to preserve the memories and the legacies of these five explorers is to conduct an investigation, find out what went wrong, take lessons learned, and then move forward," he said.
Did 'The Simpsons' Foreshadow the Titan Disaster?
Meanwhile, fans of the long-running animated series "The Simpsons" were convinced the program foreshadowed the Titan disaster.
The coincidence was part of the "Simpsons Did It" phenomenon, a string of the show's scenes and episodes which were proven to be prophetic in hindsight.
Fans pointed out that several of the show's episodes, including "Simpsons Tide" and "Homer's Paternity Coot," were eerily similar to the Titan incident.
"It all comes back to The Simpsons," said one fan of the iconic show. "I'm now convinced that The Simpsons writer is a time traveler," added another. "No longer watching the news since clearly, The Simpsons is more informative," commented another.
Coincidentally, Mike Reiss, a New York-based writer and former showrunner of "The Simpsons," completed four dives aboard the Titan, saying the submersible lost contact with its mother ship on every expedition he took because of the depth of the ocean where the Titanic was found.
"Every time they lost communication," he said in an interview with ABC News. "That seems to be just something baked into the system."
Reiss also told the BBC Tuesday (June 20) OceanGate made him sign a "massive waiver" that "mentions death three times" on the first page alone.
