2023-06-25 02:33:38
Filmmaker James Cameron, who directed the famous movie Titanic in 1997, told the BBC that he felt the loss of the Titan submersible “to the bone”.
Cameron, who has made 33 dives to the wreckage of the Titanic liner, was on a boat Sunday when the submersible went missing, and didn’t hear the news until Monday.
He says that when he learned that the submersible had lost navigation and communications at the same time, He immediately suspected that it was a tragedy.
“I felt in my bones what had happened. The fact that the electronics of the submersible, its communication system and its tracking transponder failed at the same time, indicated that there was nothing to do anymore.”
“I immediately called some of my contacts in the deep-water submersible community. Within an hour I had the following data. They were descending. They were at 3,500 meters and heading to the bottom at 3,800 meters,” he explains.
Reuters The Titan ship was heading with five passengers to see the remains of the Titanic liner, located about 4,000 meters deep in the waters of the North Atlantic.
“They lost communications and navigation, and I instantly said to myself: you can’t lose communications and navigation at the same time without something extremely catastrophic or a very serious energy catastrophe happening. And The first thing that came to mind was that there had been an implosion“, he added.
On Thursday, a US Navy official told CBS that the Navy had detected “an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion” shortly after Titan lost contact with the surface.
The official also indicated that the information had been transmitted to the US Coast Guard team, which used it to reduce the radius of the search area.
All the information that was appearing in the last few days seemed to Cameron “a prolonged, nightmarish farce with people going around talking about banging noises and oxygen and all that stuff”.
“I knew that the submarine was exactly below its last known depth and position. That is exactly where they found it,” he explained to the BBC.
He added that once a remote-controlled underwater vehicle was deployed on Thursday, searchers had “found it within hours, probably within minutes.”
PA The US Coast Guard reported that debris was found suggesting that the submersible was crushed by ocean pressure in a “catastrophic” manner.
Cameron also suggested that the loss of the Titan and its crew was a “terrible irony”comparing it with that of the Titanic in 1912.
“Now we have another shipwreck that is unfortunately based on the same principles of ignoring warnings,” he said.
“OceanGate was warned,” he added, recalling that the company had had workers quit, although Cameron declined to specify why.
The filmmaker also went on to say that some members of the deep-water submersible community, not including himself, had written a letter to OceanGate saying they believed, in their own words, that they were “going down the path of catastrophe”.
Cameron is not the first to mention concerns about the tourism company’s operations.
PA The ship lost all communication with the outside on Sunday.
A letter sent to OceanGate by the Marine Technology Society (MTS) in March 2018 and seen by the New York Times claimed that “The current ‘experimental’ approach taken by OceanGate…could have negative (minor to catastrophic) results.”
Separately, US court documents show that a former OceanGate employee warned of potential safety issues with the ship as early as 2018.
The documents show that David Lochridge, the company’s director of marine operations, raised concerns in an inspection report.
An OceanGate spokesman declined to comment on the safety concerns raised by Lochridge and the MTS.
Getty Images James Cameron told the BBC that he “felt in his bones” what happened to the submersible.
“I would not have climbed”
Cameron said in his interview with the BBC that he was “very suspicious” about the technology that OceanGate was using.
“I would not have gotten on that submersible,” he said.
He said that anyone venturing to the wreck of the Titanic should be fully aware of the risks, as “It’s a very dangerous place.”
“Accept those risks, but don’t find yourself in a situation where you haven’t been told about the risks of the actual platform you’re diving into.
“In the 21st century, there should be no risk. We’ve managed to go 60 years, from 1960 to today, 63 years without a fatality… So, you know, one of the saddest aspects of this is how preventable it really was.”
————————————————————————————————
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss out on our best content.
#submersible #James #Cameron #director #Titanic