‘Impossible for anyone to really speculate from the outside’: OceanGate co-founder pulls apart James Cameron’s Titan submersible criticism

Though the missing Titan submersible has still not been located, those onboard the vessel are presumed dead after recent discoveries made an implosion the cause of the tragedy. Many have commented on the heartbreaking news, including Titanic director James Cameron, who believes the submarine was “too experimental to carry passengers.” While many agreed with his theory, OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein has called out the criticism and stressed that it is “impossible” for Cameron to judge what went wrong with the missing Titan. 

The Avatar director has underlined the “surreal” similarities between the sunken ship the Titan set out to explore and the lost submersible. It has been reported how that OceanGate was warned how the sub was not ready to withstand the high sea pressure and yet it was allowed to make the dive, which resembles the Titanic disaster “where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field.”

In a chat with U.K.’s Time Radio, the OceanGate co-founder made clear that those not involved in fine-tuning the design and safety systems of the Titan submersible are not really equipped to form judgments or pass criticisms.

“In this kind of community, there are completely different opinions and views about how to do things, how to design submersibles, how to engineer them, build them, how to operate in the dives. But one thing that’s true of me and the other experts, is none of us were involved in the design, engineering, building, testing or even diving of the subs. 

So it’s impossible for anyone to really speculate from the outside. I was involved in the early phases of the overall development program during our predecessor subs to Titan, and I know from firsthand experience that we were extremely committed to safety and risk mitigation was a key part of the company culture.”

While Söhnlein is technically right about those on the outside not having the proper facts to offer logical answers, it is a known fact that back in 2018, David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations at the time, found it impossible for the Titan to reach the depths of 4,000 meters. The high sea pressure would cause the submarine to explode — a system failure that the hull monitoring system would only detect failure “often milliseconds before” it occurred. 

In his recent appearance on Good Morning America, Cameron, who has explored the Titanic’s ruins himself, once again highlighted that everyone from those designing the sub to the ones helming it was warned about its shortcomings and how it could lead to “catastrophic failure.” The said concerns were also raised by the Marine Technology Society in a letter (via New York Times) to Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, citing the “current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate” and how it could lead to “negative outcomes.”