The following is an interview on June 22/23, with famed Titanic film director and deep-ocean explorer James Cameron on ABC News, regarding this week's OceanGate Titan disaster:.Interviewer:.Mr. Cameron, I understand you've made a number of dives to the wreckage site, too. Just give us your sense on what you're feeling right now looking at these images of the shipwreck that you studied so closely and now hearing that another tragedy has been tied to the same area..James Cameron:.Well, I've been down there many times and I know the wreck site very well, as does my friend Bob Ballard. I've made 33 dives. I actually calculated that I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day. And of course, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, three times deeper than Titanic. So I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through..And I think that what Bob (Ballard) said, because I was watching, is absolutely critical for people to take home the message, our effort here is deep submergence diving is a mature art. From the early '60s where there were a few accidents, nobody was killed in the deep submerges until now..There's more time than between Kitty Hawk and the flight of the first 747. So if we haven't improved over that period of time, (the fact) that we have improved drastically over that period of time, and the certification protocols that all other deep submergence vehicles except this one that carry passengers, especially paying passengers all over the world in tropical waters, deep coral reefs, other wreck sites and so on, the safety record is the gold standard. Absolutely..Not only no fatalities, but no major incidents requiring all of these assets to converge to a site..Of course, that's the nightmare that we've all lived with since all of us entered this field of deep exploration. We live with it in the back of our minds, but because implosion, as Bob described it, such a violent event is first and foremost in our minds, the pressure boundary, which is what they call the hull of the sub, that the people go inside is obviously first and foremost in our minds as engineers, and we spend so much time and energy on that..And we use all the computerized tools available today, finite element analysis. We worked on our sphere for our deep, deep vehicle that went to the Challenger Deep for over three years just in the computer before we even made the thing. And then of course, we pressure tested it over and over and over and so on..So this is a mature art and many people in the community were very concerned about this sub. And 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 that needed to be certified and so on..So I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night, and many people died as a result..And for a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going on all around the world. I think it's just astonishing. It's really quite surreal..And of course, PH Nargeolet, the French legendary submersible dive pilot, a friend of mine, it's a very small community. I've known PH for 25 years. For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process..Interviewer:.It is certainly haunting to consider that comparison to the Titanic and what happened to the five people on board this submersible vehicle. James, I want to ask you though, since you've been down on these dive missions before we talked about the safety risks. We've reported on the fact that the people on board signed waivers..They knew that this was dangerous and that there weren't very many other vehicles that could come get them out if something goes wrong. How aware were you of those concerns and those risks before you went down? And is there anything that should be done when it comes to safety in the future?.James Cameron:.Look, it's comparing apples and oranges here. I went with a very proven system when I dove at Titanic with the Russian submersibles. They used very, very well understood design methodologies, and they had an excellent operating record when I dove with them. And they continued to have an excellent operating record, flawless operating record throughout their entire career. I think they're now retired, but I always had great confidence..Now, having said that, I always had confidence in the sub. The Titanic wreck site is a very hostile place, it's a dangerous site to dive. If you think of a typical research dive, you go down and you're really just operating over a bottom..You may be looking for organisms, you may be looking at geology, hydrothermal vent sites can be a bit dangerous as well. But Titanic, you've got this eight-storey, ten-storey high structure with overhanging metal structures. It's a twisted mess..You can get entangled and entanglement was always a concern of ours, but we dove with a two sub system. We always felt confident that if one of the subs got ensnared, you'd still have communication, you'd still have life support, you'd still have power, you'd have another sub there that could help you manage the problem. We always felt that we were on pretty safe ground..This sub had no backup. It didn't have a lot of backup systems from what I understand. And it was predicated on what I think of as a fundamentally flawed design principle, which is a carbon fiber hull. Which, when I first heard about a move to composite hulls, and this was many years ago, even when I was designing my sub, there was another sub that was in sort of in competition with us to get to the Challenger Deep that was operated by a guy named Chris Welsh for Richard Branson..And they had a composite hull and I told those guys, I said, "Somebody's going to get killed in that sub or in a sub like it." And the DNA of the OceanGate sub was in that sub at the time, two hemispherical end caps and a carbon fiber cylinder in the centre. And I never believed in that because the way it fails is it delaminates because you have to have a hull, a pressure hull made out of a contiguous material like steel or titanium, which is the proven standard, or acrylic..I have a small equity stake in, I think one of the best submersible companies in the world, Triton Submersibles, and they use acrylic for their hulls. But once again, it's a contiguous material. So you can do computer modelling to see how it'll behave..But this OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack. And I think if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong..And they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate and starting to crack. Because as Bob pointed out, to 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..Interviewer:.And to your point, a warning only goes so far when you have the ability to get back to the surface or there's a backup vehicle there to come help you out of a bad situation. James Cameron, thank you so much for your time.
The following is an interview on June 22/23, with famed Titanic film director and deep-ocean explorer James Cameron on ABC News, regarding this week's OceanGate Titan disaster:.Interviewer:.Mr. Cameron, I understand you've made a number of dives to the wreckage site, too. Just give us your sense on what you're feeling right now looking at these images of the shipwreck that you studied so closely and now hearing that another tragedy has been tied to the same area..James Cameron:.Well, I've been down there many times and I know the wreck site very well, as does my friend Bob Ballard. I've made 33 dives. I actually calculated that I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day. And of course, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, three times deeper than Titanic. So I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through..And I think that what Bob (Ballard) said, because I was watching, is absolutely critical for people to take home the message, our effort here is deep submergence diving is a mature art. From the early '60s where there were a few accidents, nobody was killed in the deep submerges until now..There's more time than between Kitty Hawk and the flight of the first 747. So if we haven't improved over that period of time, (the fact) that we have improved drastically over that period of time, and the certification protocols that all other deep submergence vehicles except this one that carry passengers, especially paying passengers all over the world in tropical waters, deep coral reefs, other wreck sites and so on, the safety record is the gold standard. Absolutely..Not only no fatalities, but no major incidents requiring all of these assets to converge to a site..Of course, that's the nightmare that we've all lived with since all of us entered this field of deep exploration. We live with it in the back of our minds, but because implosion, as Bob described it, such a violent event is first and foremost in our minds, the pressure boundary, which is what they call the hull of the sub, that the people go inside is obviously first and foremost in our minds as engineers, and we spend so much time and energy on that..And we use all the computerized tools available today, finite element analysis. We worked on our sphere for our deep, deep vehicle that went to the Challenger Deep for over three years just in the computer before we even made the thing. And then of course, we pressure tested it over and over and over and so on..So this is a mature art and many people in the community were very concerned about this sub. And 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 that needed to be certified and so on..So I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night, and many people died as a result..And for a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going on all around the world. I think it's just astonishing. It's really quite surreal..And of course, PH Nargeolet, the French legendary submersible dive pilot, a friend of mine, it's a very small community. I've known PH for 25 years. For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process..Interviewer:.It is certainly haunting to consider that comparison to the Titanic and what happened to the five people on board this submersible vehicle. James, I want to ask you though, since you've been down on these dive missions before we talked about the safety risks. We've reported on the fact that the people on board signed waivers..They knew that this was dangerous and that there weren't very many other vehicles that could come get them out if something goes wrong. How aware were you of those concerns and those risks before you went down? And is there anything that should be done when it comes to safety in the future?.James Cameron:.Look, it's comparing apples and oranges here. I went with a very proven system when I dove at Titanic with the Russian submersibles. They used very, very well understood design methodologies, and they had an excellent operating record when I dove with them. And they continued to have an excellent operating record, flawless operating record throughout their entire career. I think they're now retired, but I always had great confidence..Now, having said that, I always had confidence in the sub. The Titanic wreck site is a very hostile place, it's a dangerous site to dive. If you think of a typical research dive, you go down and you're really just operating over a bottom..You may be looking for organisms, you may be looking at geology, hydrothermal vent sites can be a bit dangerous as well. But Titanic, you've got this eight-storey, ten-storey high structure with overhanging metal structures. It's a twisted mess..You can get entangled and entanglement was always a concern of ours, but we dove with a two sub system. We always felt confident that if one of the subs got ensnared, you'd still have communication, you'd still have life support, you'd still have power, you'd have another sub there that could help you manage the problem. We always felt that we were on pretty safe ground..This sub had no backup. It didn't have a lot of backup systems from what I understand. And it was predicated on what I think of as a fundamentally flawed design principle, which is a carbon fiber hull. Which, when I first heard about a move to composite hulls, and this was many years ago, even when I was designing my sub, there was another sub that was in sort of in competition with us to get to the Challenger Deep that was operated by a guy named Chris Welsh for Richard Branson..And they had a composite hull and I told those guys, I said, "Somebody's going to get killed in that sub or in a sub like it." And the DNA of the OceanGate sub was in that sub at the time, two hemispherical end caps and a carbon fiber cylinder in the centre. And I never believed in that because the way it fails is it delaminates because you have to have a hull, a pressure hull made out of a contiguous material like steel or titanium, which is the proven standard, or acrylic..I have a small equity stake in, I think one of the best submersible companies in the world, Triton Submersibles, and they use acrylic for their hulls. But once again, it's a contiguous material. So you can do computer modelling to see how it'll behave..But this OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack. And I think if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong..And they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate and starting to crack. Because as Bob pointed out, to 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..Interviewer:.And to your point, a warning only goes so far when you have the ability to get back to the surface or there's a backup vehicle there to come help you out of a bad situation. James Cameron, thank you so much for your time.
