An explorer who had signed up to be on the submersible that has been missing in the North Atlantic since Sunday said he opted out of the perilous journey to and from the site of the Titanic wreckage because OceanGate, the company running the pricey voyage, didn’t seem like a “professional diving operation.”
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday, Chris Brown offered several specifics as to why he decided against joining the trip.
“This one, there seemed to be a lot of risks that were outside of my control and I didn’t like the way that they were being approached by the company,” Brown said, claiming that OceanGate’s submersible “continuously missed”' its depth targets that were supposed to be met by certain dates. According to Brown, the craft hadn’t even been 300 meters below the surface in 2018. (The Titanic wreck is at 3,800 meters.) The Daily Beast has not independently verified this claim.
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Brown then addressed the vessel itself, revealing he felt the craft had been slapped together.
“There was industrial casing being used as ballast. They got like an Xbox controller steering it. The parts seemed off the shelf,” he said, adding that the set-up seemed more reflective of an attempt to hastily cross a river.
“It didn’t come across as a professional diving operation to me. So I took the decision to withdraw my deposit and to get off the program at that stage,” Brown said of the choice he made in 2018.
Earlier that year, a report by the company’s director of marine operations stressed that the submersible required additional safety tests, and warned of “the potential dangers to passengers” in “extreme depths,” according to The New Republic. Also that year, The New York Times reported, several industry leaders, explorers and oceanographers wrote to chief executive Stockton Rush, a crew member of the missing sub, to warn that OceanGate’s “experimental” approach could cause a “catastrophic” outcome.
Rush, in a CBS Sunday Morning feature last year, acknowledged the sub was being outfitted with “off-the-shelf components” like the wireless controller. Yet he seemed to dismiss safety concerns.
“You know, there’s a limit,” he told CBS reporter David Pogue. “At some point, safety is just pure waste. I mean if you don’t just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk and it really is a risk-reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
Brown, when asked how he feels about the missing submersible knowing he could have been on it, told Tapper, “I take no pleasure from that. The situation is horrendous. How and why is a question for the future. Right now we need to focus on trying to rescue these five humans trapped beneath the sea.”
Brown said he knows one of the passengers, Hamish Harding, whom he praised as an adept problem solver. Regarding authorities looking into periodic “banging noises” underwater, Brown said that that could be the result of a plan by Harding or one of the other passengers to be located.
