James Cameron told MONDAY that sub-imploding had been detected and claims the carbon fiber fuselage is unsuitable

James Cameron was told within 24 hours of the Titanic submarine’s disappearance that an implosion had been heard, and “watched over this whole sort of everybody-running-around-with-their-hair-on-fire search, very knowing full well that it was pointless.’

The film director and deep-sea expert, who has made more than 30 dives to the Titanic’s wreckage, said Monday that the sound of a likely submarine implosion had been recorded by underwater acoustic equipment.

“I tracked down some information that was probably military in origin, although it could have been research — because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic — and got confirmation that there was a loud noise consistent with an implosion,” he said. . told CNN.

He said he wasn’t surprised, as he felt the carbon fiber hull of OceanGate Expedition’s submarine, named Titan, was fundamentally unsuitable.

Cameron, who directed the 1997 hit movie Titanic, said his dives were made in a ceramic submarine that was more resistant to the intense underwater pressure.

Cameron told Anderson Cooper on Thursday night that he was “a little heart sick with the outcome of this.”

But, he said, he’d had more time than most to come to terms with it.

“I’ve been living with it for a few days now, as have some of my colleagues in the deep immersion community,” he said.

“I was on a ship myself when this happened on Sunday.

“I heard about it for the first time on Monday morning. I immediately got on my network – because it’s a very small community in the deep immersion group – and found out about half an hour of some information that they had lost communication and lost tracking at the same time.

“The only scenario I could think of in my head that could explain that was an implosion. A shock wave so powerful it basically knocked out a secondary system that has its own pressure vessel and its own battery power, the transponder the ship uses to track where the sub is.’

Cameron, 68, said he began talking to friends and colleagues in the deep-sea industry and soon learned there was little doubt that a catastrophic implosion had occurred.

“I informed my entire circle of people that we had lost our comrades, and I encouraged everyone to raise a glass in their honor on Monday.

“Then I watched this whole kind of everyone-running-around-with-their-hair-on-fire search, knowing full well it was pointless, hoping against all hope that I was wrong, but knowing in my bones that it wasn’t me.’

Cameron said it was “certainly no surprise” when the US Coast Guard and OceanGate confirmed on Thursday that all five occupants were dead and debris from the imploded submarine had been found on the sea floor.

He said he felt terrible for the families and told them to “get through this false hope that kept dangling as it played out.”

And he said he felt the team behind OceanGate was reckless.

“Here’s a clear case, today, where collectively, we didn’t remember the lesson of Titanic — not these guys at OceanGate,” he said.

“I just find it heartbreaking that it was so preventable.”

Cameron told Cooper that the carbon fiber hull used by the OceanGate team was not suitable.

Stockton Rush, who founded the company in 2009 and is one of those killed, claimed he had worked on the design with Boeing, NASA and the University of Washington, but all three have now denied any involvement.

Cameron said he was skeptical when he learned OceanGate was making a deep-sea submarine with a composite carbon fiber and titanium hull.

‘I thought it was a terrible idea. I wish I had spoken up, but I assumed someone was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on the face of it,” he told Reuters on Thursday.

The cause of the Titan’s implosion has not been determined, but Cameron believes the critics were right when they warned that a carbon fiber and titanium hull would allow delamination and microscopic water ingress, leading to over time progressive failure.

Other industry experts and a whistleblower raised the alarm in 2018, criticizing OceanGate for choosing not to seek certification and operate as an experimental vessel.

OceanGate has not responded to recent questions about its decision to opt out of certification by industry third parties such as the American Bureau of Shipping or European company DNV.

At the time, they said certification was too lengthy a process and would slow down their innovation.

The five deaths are the industry’s first deep-sea deaths, Cameron said.

The industry standard is to make pressure hulls from contiguous materials such as steel, titanium, ceramic or acrylic, which are better for testing, Cameron said.

We celebrate innovation, right? But you shouldn’t be using an experimental vehicle to pay passengers who aren’t deep-sea engineers themselves,” Cameron said.

Cameron said both the Titanic and Titan tragedies were preceded by ignored warnings.

In the case of the Titanic, the captain sped across the Atlantic on a moonless night, despite being told about icebergs.

“Here we are again,” Cameron said.

And in the same place. Now one wreck lies next to the other for the same reason.’