James Cameron weighs in on the Titan sub tragedy’s link to the Titanic disaster

polygon.com:

Hollywood’s most famous deep-sea explorer, James Cameron, has joined the chorus of people weighing in on the Titan submersible tragedy. The Titanicdirector, who has also visited the wreckage of the famous ship 33 times and has directed and produced numerous deep sea documentaries, spoke to ABC News about the event and the concerns he and others in the undersea exploration community had, as well as some of the rules and guidelines that were not properly observed in the creation of the Titan vehicle.

Cameron, whose most recent release was Avatar: The Way of Water, expressed frustration during his interview over the fact that this submersible launched with passengers at all. According to the filmmaker, submarines tend to be remarkably safe, because of the strict guidelines and standards put in place over their design. The famously meticulous director designed his own sub, which he used to explore the Mariana Trench several years ago, making this a process he has intimate knowledge of.

Cameron noted, however, that the Titan sub is an exception to the safety of dives because it was not held up to these guidelines, meaning it was not considered fit by the general deep sea exploration community. He also mentioned that members of that community reached out to OceanGate, the company behind the sub, to warn it about these shortcomings. (The New York Times also notes this in its reporting on OceanGate’s safety issues.)

“A number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers, and it needed to be certified, and so on,” Cameron said.

The Titan submersible, which launched Saturday, June 17, had been missing