Today, Explained - OceanGate

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Deep-sea explorer G. Michael Harris has been down to the wreck of the Titanic 14 times. He begged his friend PH Nargeolet not to get on the OceanGate Titan submersible before it imploded in the sea earlier this week. He explains why he saw this coming. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn and edited by Amina Al-Sadi. It was engineered by Michael Raphael and fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have clients that are Titanic enthusiasts, which we refer to as Titaniacs. We have people who have mortgaged their home to come and do the trip. And we have people who don't think twice about a trip of this cost. For the record, the trip cost $250,000. That was Stockton Rush, the founder of Ocean Gate Expeditions, and one of five men who died when a submersible bound for the wreckage of the Titanic imploded. Today, unexplained, a deep-sea explorer and a friend of one of the passengers

tells us that he saw this coming. It's the old line that says a man needs to know his limitations, and you just can't fix stupid. And stupid games will win you stupid prizes. It was unnecessary. Everyone in the industry knew and stupid games will win you stupid prizes. It was unnecessary. Everyone in the industry knew that this vessel had no business being out there, had no business being on the Titanic.

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It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Yesterday morning, I talked to Joanna Sugden. She's an editor and a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and she had been covering the submersible since it went missing. So the submersible was meant to go on an eight to ten hour dive, taking two hours to reach the site because it's 13,000 feet underwater, then spend six to eight hours sort of viewing the wreckage re-ascending for another two hours but it set off at 8am and an hour and 45 minutes into the voyage it lost communication with the mothership on the surface which it's meant to communicate every 15 minutes people who've been on it say every 15 minutes you get a text message telling you, you know, your location and where you are in a certain grid pattern

that they've divided the ocean that they're exploring into. My understanding is that an hour and 45 minutes into that, those communications stopped being responded to. GPS doesn't work underwater, and at those depths, I've heard tracking devices sometimes do fail. And when it didn't arrive back at 3 p.m. as expected, they alerted the Coast Guard, the Ocean Gate crew, who were waiting on the ship above,

and at about 5 p.m the search was begun. A massive search operation is underway to find the missing Titan submersible 900 miles east of Cape Cod and possibly 13,000 feet below the surface. It is a race against time. You're fighting oxygen levels. They should have a day or two more left of oxygen. Also fighting the cold. Tell me about the vessel itself. What does it look like? What is it structured like? So it's a unique design which Stockton Rush developed is kind of like a cylindrical design. And most of these submersibles before this have been spherical.

So this cylinder allows more people aboard and allows a bigger viewing porthole. So this is not your grandfather's submersible. It's essentially like, for want of a better analogy, like sitting in a big toilet roll. About the size of a minivan, you can fit five people inside and there are no seats. So you're crouched in, crunched up all together. There are videos online of Stockton Rush showing that the whole thing just has one button. It should be like an elevator. You know, it shouldn't take a lot of skill.

And it's controlled by a video game controller. So it's very basic in design, which some people have said, you know, that's the beauty of it, that very little can go wrong because it is so simple. There's certain things that you want to be buttoned down. So the pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all, because that's where we work with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can

fail. Your thrusters can go, your lights can go, you're still going to be safe. Who are the people who went inside this vessel and who paid $250,000 to go on this expedition? Aside from Stockton Rush, who we understand will probably have been piloting the vessel, there is a British Pakistani businessman and his son, who is understood to have just finished his first year at university. Science and technology can also bring about higher productivity, but it can also bring about betterment for women. There was Hamish Harding, who is himself an aviator and explorer. He has

got Guinness World Records for the longest and the deepest dives in submersibles. He went to the Mariana Trench a few years ago. He last year went on the Blue Origin spaceflight. A friend I spoke to of his said, you know, when there is a something new to do that is an adventure, you will find Hamish doing it because he has the resources, but also the guts to do so. It's the challenge of going somewhere that practically nobody else has gone to. The extremes down there are phenomenal. Then there is Paul-Henri Nagelais, who is one of the world's, if not the world's, experts on the Titanic and has dived multiple times to the wreck. He has gathered materials from it. Everybody can find something. And when you start to put your nose in the Titanic, you can get out after you're stuck on it.

Yeah, so it's a commercial operation with science at its heart. You've laid out a scenario in which there was obviously an incredible amount of risk, and there were also experienced people involved. Did anyone anticipate that something like this could happen? Were there warnings? Yes, there was a lawsuit brought by someone who was fired after he raised concerns about the research and development that was going on. Among his claims with this Titan submersible was that it was only, the porthole was only certified for a depth of 4,300 feet, but it's operating at 12,000 plus feet.

He also says there was no unmanned testing of the submersible and that the hull integrity alarm would alert just milliseconds before an implosion. So there was a kind of back and forth. Concerns were also raised by engineers from the Marine Technology Society over the experimental approach adopted by OceanGate that could result in negative outcomes from minor to catastrophic. Those who were on board sign a waiver before they go, which is very detailed. And I've read some of it, I've seen some of it that

says, you know, you agree to put your life at risk for once, you know, in more legalistic language than that. But, you know, the chance of death here is it's listed throughout. There are many ways in which you could die and you have to sign away the liability for that before you go aboard. It is an untested, unregulated industry. Those aboard do know that. I was just watching an interview with Paul Henry-Nagelet this morning. The real problem at this depth is the temperature because the water temperature is 33 degrees or something like that.

And if you are in the sub and nothing is running anymore, making some heat after a while, you dive because of the cold, which is not a bad way to dive because you fall asleep and you don't suffer. So he was very aware of the risks, but I guess that's why he did what he did and achieved what he did, because he was prepared to take these risks. How was there no larger third party saying, guys, we got to make sure this thing is ship shape? How did this happen?

So some submersibles do take third party certifications, OceanGate said that they weren't going to do that in a blog post in 2019 because the innovation in design is outside of an already accepted system, that it was too far ahead of the regulation. And experts in the law of the sea have said that also the international waters, these things aren't launched off coast in the continental shelf or within a country's jurisdiction.

They're in international waters and so they don't come under those regulations. But that all seems quite murky as to who kind of has the oversight over these vessels and there may have been a kind of this grey area that they exist in. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message,

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Raise your game to the next level this year with bet mgm a sports book worth a slam dunk an authorized gaming partner of the nba bet mgm.com for terms and conditions must be 19 years of age or older to wager ontario only please play responsibly if you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today, today explained. Okay, let's jump right in. Mr. Harris, go ahead and start by giving me your full name and tell me what you do. It's G. Michael Harris, and I am a Titanic expedition leader, explorer, and the founder of RMS Titanic Incorporated.

G. Michael Harris has been down to the wreck of the Titanic 14 times. I reached him at about 5 p.m. yesterday. That was just a few hours after it had become clear that the search for the submersible was in vain because everyone was dead. One of his friends was on board. Yes, ma'am. One of my friends, P.H. Nargellet, worked for me for years. We became friends and sadly he perished. Do you have any memories of him that you want to share? What was he like? French, if that pretty much explains it. It does. You know, we're a bunch of guys that go out to sea together, and, you know, we would travel

together. Just many a fun night at dinner and lots of wine, especially when we were in Paris and got to hang out there with him. PH is a good guy. You know, there are different levels of friendship. When you've been out to sea with someone for extended periods of time, it's a bond, you know, because most people don't understand, you know, they go on a seven-day cruise, you know, whatever. And we're out there from six weeks to 12 weeks, you know, over the summer when we're doing salvage ops and diving and, you know, deploying subs, and it's, you get very close. I wonder if I can get your reaction to what we now know for certain. We know that the submersible imploded and that the five people on board, the five men on board, they didn't run out of oxygen, which is something that I think, you know, a lot of people found unbearable to think about. When you learned that they had

almost certainly been killed quickly, what went through your head? Well, I was interviewed the other day and the lady asked me, you know, what's worst case scenario? And I said, there are no good case scenarios. It's all worst case scenario. But I said, the best case scenario is if they would have imploded instantly. So before you even know what happened, you are vaporized. So when they were talking today about recovering bodies and what the Coast Guard's doing about the bodies, they don't exist anymore. Mr. Harris, I was really struck when I saw that one of the men aboard the submersible, Hamish Harding, called himself an explorer. And I guess I hadn't really heard that term in a long time, like since the books of childhood,

but you also call yourself an explorer. And I wonder, what does that mean? Well, an explorer is someone that goes to depths and goes to places that haven't been done before, going to different locations of where man hasn't come up with any type of foothold. So we're a very small elite group of people that do these deep dives searching for something that hasn't

been found before, which is the definition of an explorer. Now, someone like Hamish, God rest his soul, I'm not sure explorer is a proper term for him just for the simple fact that this is not his career. His career was something else where he then was able to afford to go on this adventure, if that makes any sense. And I'm not trying to take anything away from him, but we have people out here that are explorers, risk their lives every day, not just for one trip to Titanic. I mean, my idea was to, you know, recover the artifacts and put them on tour, put them on exhibition, share them with the world in hopes, you know, yeah, not a bad thing making a few dollars, but had no idea.

Didn't know if anybody would care. Didn't know if anybody would show up. And we went through a lot of hard times, you know, where we were called everything from, you know, grave robbers and pirates and all the other wonderful adjectives they called us. When you see something like this, where I sure as hell didn't risk my life and 30 years doing this to have some experimental vessel go out there with some tourists paying a quarter of a million bucks a piece hopping into this craft. You know, it's kind of a black mark on us, on the people that have been doing it. And, you know, we have over

500 dives of success. We have never once had an accident. Yeah, we've had some hairy recoveries. There have been a couple things here and there, but never lost one person. Everybody is an expedition leader. My job is everyone I take out is everyone I bring back. And to do that, there's a lot of work that goes into it. And so when you see something like this, it's very disheartening as a professional when they're being viewed as professionals. You're saying that it appears to you as if Ocean Gate wasn't behaving as professionally as they should have. Oh, it's not appear. I know they weren't acting as they should have.

Look, P.H. Nargile, I've been begging with them for two years. Do not get into that vessel and take it to Titanic. Don't do it. Hasn't been certified. Hasn't been pressure tested. None of the standard operating procedures. And it takes time.

And it's incredibly expensive to do it. So I get it. Not everyone can do it. But that's why everyone doesn't. You know, you don't think I would want to build a sub that I could fit five people into instead of being in a cramped little six-foot ball? Of course. But the technology and et cetera that's there, it's just we're not there yet.

We're just not there yet. And he came up with a great design, and I have nothing but respect for what he did trying to explore new technologies with a deep-diving submersible. But it wasn't time to take it to Titanic, in my opinion. What's the difference between the crafts, the submersibles that you've gone to Titanic in, and this one? We use the Russians. They have the Mir 1 and the Mir 2. The French has the Nautil, and the United States has the Alvin. All of those deep-diving submersibles were created by the Navy of each respecting country.

These are crafts that went through years of engineering and testing. So we're in this little tiny six-foot ball, three grown men, shoulder to shoulder, for 18 hours or longer when we're doing salvage ops. And we would love to have a bigger submarine. But all of the testing, all of the certifications that have been done, the engineering has shown that that is the safest design for deep sea dives. And this vessel that was out there is 22 feet long, and it was never a question of if it was going to have failure. It was when, if they didn't change what they were doing. You told your friend not to get on this submersible.

When you told him that, what did he say? Mike, you know, it's okay. You know, it's going to work out. This guy knows what he's doing. I'm going, no. Then have it certified. Have it pressure tested. No, no, they're talking to people. Everything's cool. I'm going, you're betting with your life. I am begging you. Didn't listen. And he paid with his life. But, you know, PH, 77 years old, he's led a great life. I don't feel bad for PH. He knew exactly what he was getting into. And there was no doubt in my mind when they first noticed there was a problem, he knew what was happening.

Now, the owner of the company and the three tourists that were on board, I don't think they did, but I don't think they had long enough to contemplate it. And so what do we take from all of this? I mean, as an expert, as somebody with expertise and experience, you don't think they should have been on that submersible. You don't think this should have happened. And yet it did. It was allowed to. What are the changes that need to be made here? I mean, here's the thing you got to think of. You don't think this should have happened. And yet it did. It was allowed to. What are the changes that need to be made here? I mean, here's the thing you got to think of. You know, a baby seat that you can buy at, you know, Walmart or Target or some store has got stickers on it, has government stickers on it,

as to what the rating is, the weight of the child, etc., etc. So before you can sell that, you have to get these ratings from the government before you're allowed to put a child in it. Now, you could make your own baby seat, but they're not legal. So my thing is, if you're going to build something like this and you want to get in it and kill yourself,

well, I think you have every right to do that. But I don't think you're allowed to charge or take anyone with you. Those are the regulations that need to be put into place going, look, if you don't want to go through standard testing and certification, then you're not allowed to take anyone with you and you sure aren't allowed to charge anybody to go with you. I wonder, I read earlier today that you took your 13-year-old son down at one point to see the Titanic, which is incredible and obviously involved some risk, maybe even a lot of risk. After a situation like this, do you ever sort of survey the landscape and think, maybe we should stop doing this? Maybe we don't need to take these risks. Maybe whatever we could

discover is not worth it. No, never. Not even a little bit. Here's the deal. For me to feel comfortable enough to put my 13-year-old son in that sub, now I know there are things that could go wrong, but it was a 99.9% chance it would not go wrong. That's how confident I am in these deep-sea diving submersibles. Now, someone asked me yesterday, if somebody would have offered you a million dollars cash, would you have gotten into the Titan? I said, I not only wouldn't have taken the million dollars, I would have throat-punched them in the process. Because that thing is nothing compared to the United States' Alvin, the French Nautil, the Russian Mir 1 and 2s, and the Japanese Navy built one as well called the Shinkai. Those are the subs that can reach these depths of the ocean. But guess what? The Mir submersibles, they're not rated to 36,000 feet.

You couldn't take them and dive the Marianas Trench. It's too deep. They're not rated for it. It's the old line that says, a man needs to know his limitations, and you just can't fix stupid. And stupid games will win you stupid prizes. And it's just, it's terrible because the reason we're all so upset is not only for the loss of life, but because it was so unnecessary. It was unnecessary. Everyone in the industry knew that this vessel had no business being out there,

had no business being on the Titanic. None. Knowing all of this, believing as you do that these men should not have been out there, how will you memorialize your friend? Oh, we already have. Because I have a lot of friends. One of my best friends, Ralph White, he died several years ago. Another friend of mine, George Tulloch, who started RMS Titanic with me. They've all gone before us. And literally, just hold up my coffee. I said, PH, fair winds and following seas. You're with our friends. I'll see you soon.

G. Michael Harris, Titanic expedition leader, explorer, thank you so much for taking the time for us today. No problem. Thanks for having me. Today's show was produced by Amanda Llewellyn and edited by Aminah El-Sadi. It was engineered by Michael Raphael and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.