James Cameron knew about the subimplosion days before any of us

James Cameronthe director 1997 Titanicsaid in an interview on Thursday that he had correctly guessed the fate of the submersible titan Less than 24 hours after he disappeared on Sunday, I then watched the “futile” search unfold, “hoping against hope to be wrong.”

Cameron, a prolific deep-sea explorer, explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he had missed the initial news that OceanGate Expeditions had lost contact with their submersible, having been at sea on a ship. Yet by Monday morning, she was in touch with his colleagues in what he called “the deep-dive community.”

Learning that both communications and tracking had been lost simultaneously, Cameron said he had begun to suspect an implosion, “a shock wave of events so powerful that it actually knocked out” tracking, a secondary system with its own lockboxes. .

“I honked the horn again with other people, I tracked down information that was probably of military origin, although it could have been an investigation, because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic, and I got confirmation that there was some kind of noise. noise consistent with an implosion event,” the director continued.

“That seemed enough confirmation to me. I let all my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades. And I encouraged everyone to raise a glass in his honor on Monday.”

Cameron said he received the information from “credible sources” and “I took that as a factor… I couldn’t think of any other scenario where a submarine would be lost where it would lose communications and navigation at the same time and stay put.” out of contact and did not surface.”

He said bbc news that the days that followed “felt like a prolonged, nightmarish farce with people running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all these other things.”

“I knew that the submarine was sitting exactly below its last known depth and position,” he said. “That’s exactly where they found it.”

On Thursday, the US Coast Guard confirmed at a news conference that evidence of debris found near the wreckage of the Titanic suggested a “catastrophic implosion” had occurred, killing all five people on board.

Cameron said he knew “in (his) bones” that he was right even before the announcement. “So it certainly wasn’t a surprise today.”

On CNN, Cameron added that he believes the passengers on the sub “got some warning, that they heard an acoustic signature from the hull starting to delaminate.” Cameron believes he heard delamination, the process in which water begins to separate layers of fibers, “with his ears, not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives, and that’s a pretty scary prospect.” .

He said it was “inconceivable” that the company in charge of the submersible mission to titanicOceanGate, did not go through the proper tests safe processes. He confirmed that he never did business with OceanGate and didn’t try to warn CEO Stockton Rush about his security issues, thinking “maybe they’ve worked it out (security issues).”

In an earlier interview on Thursday, he told ABC News that several of his deep-submersion colleagues had written letters to OceanGate officials in the past, warning that their submersible was too experimental and needed to be certified safe.

“I am struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about the ice ahead of his ship, yet he sped into an ice field on a moonless night and as a result , many people died. Cameron said.

“For us, it is a very similar tragedy where the warnings were not heeded. That it happens in exactly the same place with all the diving that is done all over the world, I think it’s amazing. It’s really quite surreal.”

An expert scuba diver who has participated in more than 30 deep-sea expeditions, Cameron piloted an experimental vessel of his own design on an unprecedented dive in an underwater valley in the Mariana Trench in 2012.

He “knowingly” did not seek certification for his vessel, he said The New York Times on Thursday, because it was a scientific and solo mission.

“I would never design a passenger-carrying vehicle and not have it certified,” he said.