Deep sea community ‘knew this was going to happen’ but ‘nothing was done’, says expert
An oceanographer and deep sea explorer has said the community ‘expected this to happen’ at some point, but that he’s still ‘stunned’ after a submersible went missing on Sunday (18 June).
A huge search and rescue mission is currently underway to find the OceanGate's vessel, Titan, which disappeared shortly after it descended on Sunday.
On board are five passengers: British billionaire Hamish Harding; French maritime expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
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Those on board paid $250,000 for their place on the expedition, which travels down to view the wreck of the Titanic.
Oceanographer Dr David Gallo told Sky News that those in the community had expected something like this to happen.
He told the news outlet: "Anyone in the exploration business of the deep sea expected this to happen, not at this particular time, but we knew this was going to happen at some point.
"We knew darn well it would and we knew all the difficulties around how you recover from it if the sub is stuck on a shipwreck, if they lose batteries and nothing was done about it, there's no policies, there's no plan.
"It just frustrates me. Now begins the scramble to try and get the right things at the right place at the right time and it's just an unnecessary step because we did know at some point this was going to happen and I think all of us in the community are stunned.
"It wasn't a surprise in a way, but oh my God it really did happen."
This isn't the first time the submersible has got into trouble - last year, a separate crew also became lost during its expedition.
One of the passengers on board that voyage was Shrenik Baldota.
Speaking about the incident during a news report, he recalled: "We were lost. We were lost for two-and-a-half hours."
Fellow passenger, CBS reporter David Pogue, also opened up about the scary ordeal.
Taking to Twitter this week, he wrote: “You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard."
Explaining the set-up during his report back in November, Pogue said: "The crew closes the hatch, from the outside, with 17 bolts. There's no other way out.
"So unless they are found and let out of the vessel manually, they will die."
"There's no way to escape, even if you rise to the surface by yourself," he told the BBC. "You cannot get out of the sub without a crew on the outside letting you out.
“There’s no backup, there’s no escape pod - it’s get to the surface or die."
Claire Reid