Submersible expert who went on early Titan dive: 'OceanGate came very, very close to killing me'

A submersible expert said he heard cracking sounds during a deep-sea dive on a prototype of the Titan sub, a month before a crack was found in the vessel.

Karl Stanley, the owner of the Honduras-based deep-sea diving expedition company Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration, testified on Tuesday during the U.S. Coast Guard's hearing on the 2023 catastrophic implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible that killed five people.

Stanley went on one of the first crewed dives of the first prototype of the submersible in April 2019 in the Bahamas. He, OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush and two others went to 3,760 meters -- about the depth of the Titanic wreckage. Rush had previously taken two solo dives in the prototype hull to around 4,000 meters, according to log records shown during the hearing.

Stanley said as they went down, the prototype carbon-fiber hull was "making noises," and the cracking sounds "amplified" the deeper they went. He said Rush had warned them about the noises but they were still unnerving.

"I think nobody wanted to be the one to say they wanted to go up first," he said.

Stanley said he surmised that the cracking sound was a carbon fiber band "breaking." As they returned to the surface, he said there was a "grand finale of cracking sounds."

"I'm not a carbon fiber expert, but just thinking about it logically, the only way that you get a whole lot of more cracking when you're coming back up is that material degraded so much that it stored energy that was then released as the pressure was released," he said.

He said there were "plenty of issues" with the dive, including with the drop weights.

Stanley said he raised his concerns about the noises in emails to Rush following the dive, writing that it seemed like there was a defect, and advised Rush to "gain more experience to mitigate risk." His emails noted that Rush told him indirectly not to speak about the noises he heard on the dive. Stanley said his emails with Rush ultimately strained their relationship.

A month after the dive, a crack was found in the carbon-fiber hull prototype, and it was not used for any Titanic dives, according to the Coast Guard.

Stanley said Rush never told him about the crack and that he learned about it from a Wired article. He said he also didn't learn that the prototype hull had been struck by lightning prior to their dive until after the fact. He said he would not have gone on the dive if he had known that.

Stanely said when he first heard that OceanGate was making a carbon-fiber hull, he was "excited."

"In retrospect, there were a lot of red flags that now, after the implosion and learning more and putting different pieces of the puzzle together, start making sense and are kind of clues," he said.

In his final remarks to the investigators, Stanley said he believed Rush started OceanGate because he "had a desire to leave his mark on history."

"OceanGate came very, very close to killing me and had a severe impact on my business as well as an entire industry," he said.

'It's been a difficult year'

A former OceanGate employee who also testified on Tuesday got emotional while remembering the people killed in the June 2023 implosion of the Titan.

"I had the privilege of knowing the explorers whose lives were lost," Amber Bay, former OceanGate director of administration, said during the hearing. "There's not a day that passes that I don't think of them, their families and their loss. It's been a difficult year for them, for all of us."

Rush, French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, were killed when the Titan imploded during a deep-sea voyage to the Titanic wreckage.

Bay said she believes the teenager was the youngest person to ever dive on the Titan, and that there were "no true misgivings" about his age ahead of the dive.

"Stockton had spoke to the family directly on a few occasions and met with them personally," she said. "So there was no concerns once they had been spoken with and understood. Everyone understood and was ready and excited to dive."

Bay started working for OceanGate in December 2018. She said part of her duties included the care of the "mission specialists" -- what the company called those who paid to go on dives -- during expeditions.

She described a mission specialist, who paid $250,000 for the Titan dive, as someone who was "curious about deep-sea exploration" and understood that "this wasn't a luxury trip."

"As Stockton put it, there was no chocolate on the pillow," she said. "They were invited to be involved and take an active role as much as possible as they wanted to."

During his testimony, Stanley said the term mission specialist was "clearly a dodge of getting around U.S. regulations with passengers."

Towing concerns

Bay said she was present for all Titan missions in 2021 and 2022, as well as the first three in 2023 -- missing the fourth and fifth, which would turn out to be the last, due to a family obligation.

OceanGate utilized the Horizon Arctic as its support ship in 2021 and 2022, which transported the Titan on board, though the vessel was no longer available in 2023. They started utilizing the Polar Prince, wherein the Titan would have to be towed behind on a platform, she said. The 2023 missions started earlier in the year than previous missions due to the Polar Prince's availability, she said.

Asked if she had any concerns about towing the Titan the 370 nautical miles to the Titanic wreck site, she said, "Certainly."

"I think anybody would have, you know, concerns that this was going to be more challenging and more difficult in some aspects," she said. "Stockton assured us that he was up for the challenge and the team was up for the challenge."

She noted differences in the weather and water conditions on the 2023 missions compared to previous years.

"The seas were much higher than earlier on, than I remember being on the Horizon Arctic," she said. "It was much colder. There's a lot of rain."

Asked if the Titan was ever damaged during the towing that year, she said she believed the vessel lost or damaged a fairing -- a plastic cover that goes over the sub, "just like a car bumper." She said on one or two occasions the platform also took on water and started to list.

Bay refutes prior witness testimony

A former OceanGate contractor who testified during the hearing last week, Antonella Wilby, told investigators about a conversation she had with Bay about a 2022 dive, during which passengers heard a loud bang as the Titan was ascending.

Wilby testified that when she brought up a customer's concerns about the loud bang to Bay, Bay told her, "You have a bad attitude. You don't have an explorer mindset. You know, we're innovative and we're cowboys, and a lot of people can't handle that."

Asked to explain those remarks on Tuesday, Bay refuted the testimony.

"I don't believe that either of those statements is exactly what I had said," she said.

She said Wilby's concerns were "looked into and notated," though she had no knowledge of what she was specifically referencing.

Bay said she did not deal with safety concerns and would refer people to the head of engineering, the director of operations and Rush.

"I did ask her if she did have concerns, to bring those up to those particular people," Bay said.

She said she believed OceanGate staff felt comfortable raising safety concerns with Rush.

"I wasn't witness to those types of meetings, but I was witness to people saying, 'Oh yeah, I talked to Stockton about that today,'" she said.

OceanGate's financial problems

At the beginning of 2023, OceanGate's finances were "getting very tight," and employees were asked to have their paychecks deferred once, Bay said.

"We were looking to make ends meet, and if we were able to defer our paychecks, there was an offer that Stockton had derived -- I believe with an attorney or whomever -- that we could delay our paychecks and be paid a small amount of interest and recaptured at a specific time," she said.

She said she and Rush delayed their paychecks once.

Phil Brooks, the former engineering director of OceanGate, testified on Monday that he left the company in February 2023 in part due to the financial issues.

"It was clear that the company was economically very stressed," he said.

OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.

The two-week hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.