This week, the National Transportation Safety Board released the findings of its investigation into the implosion of the Titan submersible in June 2023. The results were an unsurprising mix of engineering failures, lack of adequate testing, and “critically flawed” safety procedures. Also unsurprising is one of the experts interviewed as part of the investigation. This person’s name is redacted from the shared report, but as soon as the interview hit the web, internet denizens immediately figured out who it was.
Let’s see if you can guess who it is, too. The first clue comes before the actual interview, when the redacted subject is identified as the “Co-designer/Pilot” of the Deepsea Challenger. The second clue comes from the very first question:
Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible operations?
A. Well, I’m sure you’re familiar with my film Titanic.
That’s right, the submersible expert is none other than James Cameron, a well-known submersible expert. He has publicly weighed in on the Titan tragedy many times, sharing that many within the “deep submergence engineering community” (“It’s a small community”) had tried to sound the alarm about the company, OceanGate. A year after the implosion, Cameron criticized the investigation, telling 60 Minutes Australia that he’d “volunteered to the investigative committee at the Coast Guard.” He said, “They should be inviting me but they’re not. Why listen to a scientist? Frankly, I think they’ve kind of got egg on their face and they don’t want outside opinions. That’s just my interpretation.”
Well, somebody finally invited Cameron in to give his full perspective on the situation. (The interview was conducted by a Lieutenant Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard, name also redacted.) The names in the report are likely redacted just as a matter of procedure, but it makes for unintentionally comical reading. It doesn’t exactly hide his identity to include specific details such as, “I had been an avid diver since I was in my teens and I made a film called The Abyss in 1988 which was released in 1989.” You can read the full interview for yourself here.
