I thought I remembered all the press saying “Noon on Friday [say] is the very longest they could live on the oxygen they’d have” and then it was announced at 11:55am Friday, whoops, here’s this debris we found, show’s over. Which really was a remarkable coincidence, if my memory is anywhere close to correct. Do you remember when they announced finding debris?
This truly may not be the thread for that discussion either, though, so I don’t mean to harp on it.
Well, I didn’t have any trouble with them keeping the search. Remember, you can’t get out from the inside, so if the sub had somehow managed to survive to the surface, they aren’t out of the water yet, so to speak. They could suffocate, which would be a bummer man.
Given that, yeah, we all knew they were dead.
I’m not sure that I fully agree with Cameron on this, but he’s obviously privy to far more information that I have. I think more than anyone else, it was the media that was responsible for dragging things out and trying to put a sensationalized suspenseful spin on it.
IMHO what the USN allegedly heard was a noise that may have been the implosion, or may have been something else. Does anyone know exactly what the implosion of a carbon fiber hull is supposed to sound like? It’s known from destructive testing of scale models that it would be very loud, but what would it sound like from a great distance away? In the absence of definitive evidence that everyone had perished, ISTM that a continuing search was morally mandatory. If it gave loved ones false hope, blame the media.
The one thing that’s very clear in the aftermath, and amply documented here, is the absolutely reckless incompetence at Oceangate, mostly due to the hubris and arrogance of Stockton Rush.
Well, Cameron was right about one thing - they should hire him for the investigation for his psychological insights, because he’s got the same type of overbearing arrogance that Stockton Rush did. Seriously, he’s a movie maker. Sure he’s been to the Titanic 33 times, but the OceanGate disaster would have happened in any ocean, it had nothing to do with the Titanic itself. And yeah, I’m sure he’s picked up a lot about submersible design, but I think the people who actually design, build & test submersibles are more qualified to do the investigation.
And if the Navy said the info about the implosion sounds couldn’t be released, it couldn’t, period, end of discussion. I’m sorry if that means the families had false hope for a few days, but I’d also be sorry if classified sonar capabilities were revealed to potential enemy militaries.
The real story is, if it’s so super-secret-classified… how did Cameron hear about it? From a Navy source, sure, but… isn’t that concerning on its own? Or did the Navy grant Cameron a security clearance when he filmed that documentary for them about the ballistic missile submarine that sank due to some underwater aliens?
It became public on June 22, 2023, 4 days after the Titan went missing, according to this paywalled Wall Street Journal article.
Note that the article says “suspected”; Cameron may be exaggerating and turning “suspected” into “the USN knew”.
A top secret military acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard what the U.S. Navy suspected was the Titan submersible implosion hours after the submersible began its voyage, officials involved in the search said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12
ANd this Guardian article from June 22, 2023, says that the USN heard an “anomaly” from its listening gear, and passed that on to the Coast Guard. That sounds like it wasn’t enough to make the call.
Cameron, on the other hand, as soon as he heard about the noise, concluded that there had been an implosion on the strength of that alone.
You’re right about Cameron’s arrogance. I’ve met him professionally several times, and although he’s always been perfectly pleasant to me, I know first- and second-hand about times he “knew better” than people with a lot more technical experience in certain areas.
That said, even though he has no formal education or training in deep-sea submersible technology, he has devoted a significant portion of his life to underwater exploration, entirely apart from filmmaking. He was involved in the development of Deepsea Challenger, the submersible that holds the record for deepest dive, and was the solo pilot on that dive and others to the Mariana Trench. IOW, he is not merely a dillentante “movie maker” masquerading as an expert. He is about as well informed as anyone who has not devoted his entire career to the subject.
But it was released, after the four-day search was over. Just because someone wanted to keep something classified doesn’t mean they were justified. What supposed harm would have been done by releasing info about the “anomaly” on Day One, Day Two, or Day Three that wasn’t done by releasing it on Day Four?
I get wat you’re saying, but I can’t resist making a bad joke…
So you’re saying that of all the rank amateurs, he’s the rankest?
Those still engaged in the search might not have given it their best effort if they’d known, even if they were also told results were hardly conclusive.
Primarily revealing the capability of their sensing equipment in the area.
While the existence of military gear in the area is not really a secret, what is confidential is how much there is and what is can really do, which could be partially revealed by letting on exactly what they heard and when.
I think the point, which isn’t a bad one, is that if it’s so secret squirrel, then revealing the information on day four doesn’t really make anymore sense than revealing it on day one, if the concern is over giving out too much information about classified capabilities.
If, however, the concern is that such data can hardly be 100% conclusive, then it makes sense not to publicize it right away, as it could lead to a decrease in urgency among people engaged in the search effort. The human element.
No reason for it to be one or the other.
It was almost certainly a bit of both. At least some delay was due to the secrecy of whatever we had out there. And most was probably due to the lack of conclusive evidence.
They heard a pop in the middle of the ocean. That was probably the implosion. But even if they divulged that from day 1, unless they had incredibly sophisticated gear beyond our understanding of the current state of the art (which, to be fair, is possible) that could conclusively determine it was the submersible, they were still going to keep searching.
My stint in the navy I worked at radio direction-finding stations. While their presence was not exactly secret, their capability and limitations certainly were.
None of which means that an investigation isn’t doing it’s best if it doesn’t include him, which was certainly what he was implying in that interview. There are plenty of people who have devoted their entire careers to the subject, who are probably much easier to get to work together & won’t let their own personalities get in the way. Plus the fact he was close friends with one of the victims probably disqualifies him automatically anyway.
There’s a procedure in place for releasing classified information. Sure, someone can decide to short-circuit it, and had the information been of the form “They’re still alive, and here’s the exact point where they are”, then yes, I’d expect/hope they’d give that information to the rescue teams immediately. But when it’s “They’re almost certainly dead”, I don’t see the urgency in short-circuiting the process.
I wasn’t suggesting that Cameron should have been part of the investigation, for the reasons you mentioned, only that his opinions on its conduct weren’t entirely unqualified and uninformed.
Do we know that the delay in releasing the Navy’s info was because of a formal declassifiation process? Or was it just because it was leaked? Cameron’s critique of the delay was for the sake of the families and friends, of which he was one. Which explains some of his heat about the matter.
And he was justifiably angry, as are we all, that Rush was allowed to try out this untested and uncertified craft with untrained paying customers specialists.
“Allowed”?
The Titanic lies in international waters. Who exactly was supposed to stop them? Even leading the rescue effort was more about who was closest to them - the US and Canadian Coast Guards rather than jurisdiction.
I’m sure the families would have loved know definitively one way or the other but “one of our guys heard a pop and they’re probably dead” is not the sort of information that helps them. Sure, somebody like Cameron may have just assumed they were gone and started processing that information, but most people knew the likelihood of a rescue was low in any event. In either case, the rescue team would have continued the search.
This sounds more like a “I don’t like not being in charge” problem for Cameron than anything else.
There seems to be a default assumption in a lot of people’s minds that everything everywhere is regulated by some government agency.
In this case the assumption being that even if access to the Titanic site itself is unregulated and the practice of deep sea submersibles in unregulated, then at least the practice of offering any product or service for sale to customers in any jurisdiction is regulated by some agency of the customer’s jurisdiction.
Which simply isn’t true for everything, even though it probably is for most prosaic things. I can buy a submersible ride with my local government not giving a shit, but woe betide the guy around here who opens a barbershop in his garage without a state barber’s license and a city/county business license. And a variance from the zoning board.
There would be ways to do it. You focus on the ports of the countries nearest to the wreck, like the US, Canada, Ireland, the UK, and France. Submersibles have to enter or leave a port, so regulate them through the ports.
Have the countries closest to the wreck site, like the United States, Canada, Ireland, the UK, France, make it a criminal offence to advertise or sell trips on an uncertified submersible, leaving from any of their ports.
Have those countries make it a criminal offence for an uncertified submersible to enter or leave any port in those countries with the intention of carrying passengers underwater.
Have those countries pass shipping laws that provide that any vessel that enters or leaves one of their ports, carrying an uncertified submersible with passengers to a wreck site, is subject to impoundment, and captain and officers of the ship are liable to lose their personal certifications.
All of those countries set out clear regulatory requirements for certifying the safety of a submersible.
“Allowed” was my slightly careless way of putting it, not Cameron’s. We all know that there were no government regulations to prevent Rush from doing this, or rather, IIRC, that where there were, he took steps to get around them.
I’m right in remembering something like this, am I not? That if he had sailed out of another country, or used a ship registered elsewhere, he would have been breaking a law?
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you thought he should have been part of the investigation. I’m criticizing his assumption that he should have been, because he’s been to Titanic a lot. When there are plenty of reasons not to include him.
One thing Rush did was classify the paying passengers into crew members, because there’s a lot more legal liability when a passenger gets injured than a crew member. Whether that will/would have stood up in court we may never know, since Rush is dead too.
