James Cameron thinks the OceanGate rescue is a “crazy” media circus

• James Cameron said the rescue operation for the victims of the OceanGate submarine had turned into something “crazy”.
• “We all knew they were dead,” Cameron said in an interview with “60 Minutes Australia” that aired Sunday.
• The Titanic expert added that the rescue then turned into a “wonderful media circus.”

A year after the OceanGate implosion, filmmaker and Titanic expert James Cameron called the rescue operation “crazy” – because those involved in the rescue probably already knew that all the victims were dead.

In an interview with 60 Minutes Australia published on Sunday, Cameron commented on the extensive, four-day rescue operation that followed the submersible’s disappearance on June 18.

“We all knew they were dead. We had already raised a glass on Monday evening and toasted our fallen comrades,” he said in the interview.

He added that he believed the Coast Guard had followed a rescue procedure that was “unnecessarily distressing” for the families, as authorities had already been notified of an “implosion event” near the Titanic wreck site.

Cameron said he received news of the implosion from a naval source on Monday morning and wrote it down on a notepad in his hotel.

“I literally wrote this down on the pad the moment I heard from my Navy source, a very reliable source, that they had heard of an event and triangulated it to the location,” Cameron said.

The note he showed the interviewer read: “9:25 Implosion confirmed.”

However, Cameron said the disaster had created a “wonderful media circus”.

“It just turned into this crazy thing,” he added. “Everyone was running around with their hair on fire, even though we knew exactly where the submarine was. No one could admit that they didn’t have the opportunity to go down and look. So they were running all over the surface and the whole world was waiting with bated breath.”

The U.S. Coast Guard and OceanGate announced on June 22 that debris found on the seafloor confirmed that the submersible had imploded and the five men on board were dead.

The victims were British billionaire Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani multimillionaire Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, former French navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

The titanium and carbon fiber submersible set sail on June 18 to explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic at a depth of almost 4,000 meters. Less than two hours after the dive began, it disappeared from radar.

Cameron, who has visited the wreck of the Titanic 33 times, has been a vocal critic of OceanGate, the company behind the ill-fated submersible.

He said he had warned company officials that the Titan ship could experience “catastrophic failure” and that it was “only a matter of time” before something went wrong.

He had also said that the company lacked “rigor and discipline” and that new regulations for deep-sea exploration were needed.

Cameron’s representative did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment sent outside of regular business hours.