Titanic director James Cameron has weighed in on the tragic Titan submersible voyage that now appears to have claimed the lives of all five people onboard.
The Oscar winner, who himself has taken several underwater excursions to the sunken wreck of the Titanic, told ABC News on Thursday: “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that after taking part in over 30 dives, he is well-versed in the dangers of deep-sea exploration.
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“I’ve been down there many times, I know the wreck site very well,” he said. “And of course, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, so I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle, and all the safety protocols that you have to go through.”
He added: “It’s absolutely critical for people to get the take-home message that deep submersible diving is a mature art.”
The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, went missing on Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean near the site of the Titanic shipwreck. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a press conference on Thursday that the missing sub is believed to have succumbed to a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreckage site.
