OCEANGATE..GATE

The "race against time" was actually a scandal for the ages.

What are the odds that the OceanGate submersible would go missing one day after I’d spent an evening down a YouTube rabbit hole researching diving accidents and what a high PSI (pounds per square inch) can do to a human body.

An explanation - I am a lifelong learner and sometimes become obsessed with figuring something out and for reasons I don’t remember, last Saturday it was diving accidents. So when the news broke on Monday about the sudden disappearance of the Titan submersible my first, completely amateurish sense was that it had imploded — not unlike what happened during the gruesome Byford diving disaster I’d been researching on the weekend. This article is worth reading but not for the faint of heart. It explains the science behind an explosive/implosion decompression event that killed five men in an instant.

Back to the Titan — heading for the Titanic wreck where PSI is 6 thousand or 400 atmospheres of pressure. Because both comms and a locater (two seperate systems) had gone out at the same time, it was very likely a catastrophic failure of the hull causing a similar tragedy for the passengers inside. And therefore the debris was sitting somewhere just below where the event happened, an hour and forty five minutes into the trip, near the Titanic shipwreck on the ocean floor. This is logical deduction and if you add to the story, revealed later, that the navy picked up the sound of something exploding in the ocean exactly when the Titan went silent — one can only shake one’s head at the fake story that took off in the media. Even without the navy’s audio evidence — implosion was the most likely scenario. I am very curious why the navy never seemed to weigh in with the most direct data point. Why was the audio kept under wraps?

Instead we got of week of typical media hysteria including countdown clocks predicting when oxygen would run out for the five passengers and a fable that they might be alive in their capsule floating, perhaps on the surface.

There was literally no credible evidence for this scenario and plenty to the contrary but it wasn’t until Titanic director and submariner, James Cameron stepped forward to lay it all out that the absurdities of the previous few days became clear.

I’ve always thought Cameron was talented but arrogant, however in listening to his analysis and fully understanding his expertise, I was blown away and have a new respect for him.

In a sense, he is the hero of the piece because he spoke unpleasant truths in the face of comforting myths woven by legacy media and for reasons I can’t explain — coast guard and navy — two organizations I have always deeply respected. Remember the knocking sounds every thirty minutes that suggested proof of life? So now that we know that there was no life how did this story ever get the attention it did? Either they were indicative of human communication or they weren’t. I suspect there was a grasping at straws because everyone seemed to want the story to be different than what the facts suggested. It looks like Rolling Stone — one of the worst publications in the world, may have broken that story which now raises more questions. For the so-called media pundits to be so sure and for the maritime rescuers to let the idea hang with credibility is troubling and leaves a dark cloud over the whole rescue enterprise

Cameron figured out more than all the maritime experts and speculating media — who seemed sure the Titan Five were alive. Click here for video of Cameron explaining why he knew on Monday what had happened — a masterclass in critical thinking.

Once Cameron made it OK to think clearly and critically about the Titan, a flood incriminating stories about OceanGate and its CEO Stockton Rush, moved in to take over the media space. This was no longer a fake tale of brave explorers awaiting rescue but one of five dead humans, four of whom had mistakenly put their fate in the hands of an arrogant fool who thought topline safety inspections were for others — but not innovators like himself.

In the years prior to Titan's implosion, Rush made comments that may similarly be viewed as ironic. The CEO told CBS News that the submersible was "pretty much invulnerable" in 2017. He also touted the benefits of "breaking the rules" and argued that "at some point, safety just is pure waste" during an interview with CBS correspondent David Pogue last year.

As the granddaughter of a master-mariner/commercial fisherman and boat builder, I find it offensive that Rush thought he could pull one over on the most powerful force on the planet. Given his background that is now emerging, it is incredible he was ever taken seriously.

There were multiple warnings from people in the submersible community including detailed and documented issues plus a company whistleblower who was fired for being careful and who then filed a lawsuit. One former passenger reported strange sounds that indicated a pressure hull problem while on an earlier dive but this did not deter Rush from selling seats to disaster.

During a trip on board the Titan off the coast of the Bahamas in April 2019, Karl Stanley, an expert in submersibles, knew immediately that something was off: He heard a cracking noise that got only louder over the two hours it took for the submersible to plunge more than 12,000 feet.

The next day, Mr. Stanley wrote an email in which he detailed his concerns to Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, who was also on board the Titan for the dive, urging Mr. Rush to cancel the expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic that were planned for that summer.

“A useful thought exercise here would be to imagine the removal of the variables of the investors, the eager mission scientists, your team hungry for success, the press releases already announcing this summer’s dive schedule,” wrote Mr. Stanley, according to a copy of the email seen by The New York Times. “Imagine this project was self funded and on your own schedule. Would you consider taking dozens of other people to the Titanic before you truly knew the source of those sounds?”

What we are learning now is bordering on criminal. And it would seem the RCMP are in agreement. A report on Saturday suggests this could go much further. Imagine the wife and mother whose husband and son perished together on the trip - one the teenager only agreed to because it was Father’s Day. She will be swerving from self-blame to blaming her dead husband for the rest of her life but I hope eventually she will see where the finger must point.

How foolish was the media to buy into a fairy tale of derring-do and heroic rescues instead of demanding facts and asking hard questions. Why did the navy play along and why did the coast guard not weigh in on what was obvious to James Cameron, thousands of miles away in Hollywood or perhaps at his farm even further, in New Zealand.

To be brutally honest — the story gets worse. Reasonably intact ballast on the sea floor suggests an indication of trouble — the dropping of weight to ascend just before the disaster took place. Were there more cracking sounds? Did special sensors known to be on the Titan signal the impending implosion? Was there a futile race to the surface — enough time for the people aboard to understand their terrible fate? This will matter when the lawsuits are filed. Payouts are bigger when a doomed human has knowledge they are about to die. And yes there will be lawsuits. The infamous waiver will very likely not indemnify against recklessness and fraud.

"This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack," Cameron said on a Thursday appearance on ABC. "And I think, if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong."

"They probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate and starting to crack," he said. 

"It's our belief, we understand from inside the community, that they had dropped their ascent weights, and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency," Cameron added.

So even the media’s final framing that at least they didn’t know what hit them, is very likely also bogus. Odds are they had a few seconds or even minutes to understand that something was terribly wrong.

Do I think the massive search effort should have been mounted? I probably do - even though an ROV was always going to find the debris field near the wreck to make it final. As for cost — this story rises as a cautionary tale and in the end might have been worth the warning.

These days, not playing into fake media narratives driving a desperate push for more viewers is the act of heroism.

Stockton Rush’s decisions were born of hubris. The same kind that drove the Titanic into an iceberg at high speed. I believe this analogy first came from James Cameron and I totally agree. 15 hundred souls plus five more. In peril on the sea.

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bid'st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep;
O hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.

Stories have emerged of people who backed out of the Titan dive over safety fears and a bad feeling about OceanGate. Stay critical, friends. It might save your life.

Update: June 26, 2023 — Daily Mail reports a different version of the Dawood family story. Mrs. Dawood is suggesting her son Suleman wanted to go on the Titan and that she stepped aside and gave him her place. This scenario change will not lesson either her guilt or grief. She was on the mothership during the search — with a desperate eye on the surface of the ocean waiting for an ending that never came — because her husband and son were already gone.