OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush allegedly betrayed such a “cavalier attitude” to “basic safety” that a TV cameraman, who was tasked with filming a 2021 expedition on the ill-fated Titan submersible, pulled out of the shoot following a test dive.
Brian Weed boarded the sub in Washington’s Puget Sound in May of that year, according to a story published Thursday in Insider. The camera operator, who had already worked on Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” for more than 100 episodes by then, said the voyage was meant as a “precursor” to a planned 2.5-mile dive to the Titanic shipwreck a few months later.
Weed told Insider that they were already locked in the sub when he asked Rush what would happen if the Titan had to make an emergency ascent but was far from its mothership. He claimed the CEO gave him a “bizarre” answer that didn’t put him at ease.
“Well, there’s four or five days of oxygen on board,” Rush stated, according to Weed.
“What if they don’t find you?” the cameraman then asked.
“Well, you’re dead anyway,” Rush purportedly replied.
“It felt like a very strange thing to think,” Weed told Insider. “It seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean.”
Last month, the Titan lost communication with its mothership less than two hours after embarking on a separate expedition to the Titanic. A frantic search ensued, but recovered wreckage soon suggested that the vessel had imploded — killing Rush and four others aboard.
Weed told Insider that his encounter with Rush made him “very uncomfortable” about diving to the depths of the ocean in the Titan.
“If you’re out there, and they don’t find you in that many days, you’re just going to die anyway,” Weed said, summing up the CEO’s apparent mindset about a possible emergency.
The planned “Expedition Unknown” episode was eventually canceled over safety concerns, with Weed noting that his test dive had also experienced a litany of mechanical and communication problems. Passengers on other Titan expeditions recently shared similar experiences.
OceanGate officially suspended all sub explorations earlier this week.