James Cameron says the loss of the Titan sub is a “nightmare”

The U.S. Coast Guard announced this afternoon that it has recovered multiple pieces of debris from the Titan submersible scattered around the wreckage of the Titanic, with the conditions being consistent with a “catastrophic implosion of the vessel.” That means all five people on board are dead, that they most likely died a while before the debris was found, and that they most likely died instantly when the enormous pressure of the ocean destroyed the vehicle.

It’s an unfortunately predictable end to a story that has fascinated everyone this week, but James Cameron—who is a noted submersible aficionado in addition to being the guy who made the Titanic movie—suggested during an appearance on ABC News that a submersible getting destroyed like this shouldn’t have been as predictable as it was. According to Cameron, who does seem somewhat shaken up by all of this, the safety standards for submersibles like this are generally very good, to the extent that all deep-sea submersibles other than the Titan have been held to strict certifications and have a “gold standard” safety record because of them.

That being said, this kind of implosion is “the nightmare” that everyone who works with submersibles like this has had to live with, and Cameron even says a number of the “top players” in the deep submergence engineering community tried to tell OceanGate that its Titan sub was “too experimental” to carry passengers and to go that deep. Naturally, Cameron is struck by the similarities between all of this and the actual Titanic, which similarly ignored the advice of experts and barreled on ahead with its journey, and he says it’s “surreal” to think about how this happened literally right where the Titanic sunk—even with all of our modern safety measures and technological advancements.

Similarly, another submersible aficionado who happens to be famous for other things (former Simpsons writer Mike Reiss) recently commented on the frightening nature of these OceanGate expeditions, saying he went into the ocean with the company multiple times and lost communication with the surface during almost each one.