A CBS reporter who travelled aboard the submersible currently missing on an expedition to see the wreckage of the Titanic said he was deeply worried as rescue officials continue to search for the craft.
David Pogue, a correspondent for CBS News’ Sunday Morning, joined the vessel’s crew last year and spoke with the company behind it, OceanGate Expeditions, and its CEO, Stockton Rush. He recounted his own anxiety before getting inside the minivan-sized submersible, including when the craft got lost underwater for several hours when communications broke own.
“This is going to sound very janky to a lot of people, but a lot of this submersible is made of off-the-shelf, improvised parts,” Pogue said Monday in an interview on CBS. “For example, you control it with an Xbox game controller. Some of the ballasts are these abandoned lead pipes from construction sites and the way you ditch them is everybody gets to one side of the sub and they roll off a shelf.”
“The important thing,” he continued, is “the capsule that contains the people and the air, that was co-designed with NASA, the University of Washington. The part that keeps you alive is rock solid.”
The US Coast Guard said Monday efforts to recover the craft were ongoing, and officials estimated the vessel had between 70 and 96 hours of oxygen. OceanGate said it continued to explore “all options to bring the crew back safely” and that the company’s “entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families.”
Five people were in the vessel, which disappeared in an area of the ocean with depths up to 13,000 feet. Private customers aboard pay up to $250,000 (£195,000) to travel to the Titanic’s wreckage.
Pogue said he was concerned as the submersible has multiple methods to rise to the surface, before noting he was informed by the company’s founder, Stockton Rush, during his own expedition that there was a small possibility the craft could get snagged on something or spring a leak.
“What concerns me, this thing has seven different ways to return to the surface … so why isn’t it at the surface?” Pogue said Monday. “There is no radio and GPS that works underwater, so you really are on your own in this thing.”
“It sounds bad,” he added. “If all seven methods they have of coming to the surface aren’t working, then what’s going on.”