The depths of the ocean are cold, dark and turbulent, which makes everything dangerous, so Michael Gillen, a scientist, author and the first TV reporter to see and report on the wreckage of the Titanic, believes deep-sea tourism should be stopped after the deaths of five people on board submarine “Titan”, reports CNN.

Guillen almost didn’t make it back after surviving a mission to the wreckage of the Titanic in 2000 when, he said, the submersible he was in got caught in an undercurrent, causing him to collide with the wreckage’s propeller.

Michael Guillen claims to have been the first TV reporter to ever report on the Titanic disaster when he descended into the depths of the ocean in 2000 in a vessel similar to the underwater Titan.

He recalls that together with his diving partner Brian and Russian pilot Victor, they dived on a small Russian submersible taken from the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh.

After inspecting the Titanic’s hold, where “everything went well,” the crew decided to go aft.

“When we got to the stern, we were caught… by a very fast undercurrent. So we ended up stuck in the screws,” Gillen told the BBC.

“We felt this collision and pieces of debris … huge pieces, rusty pieces of the Titanic started falling on us.”

He said that he even began to mentally say goodbye to his loved ones.

In the end, the pilot managed to unlock the submersible, but all this happened in complete darkness.

Reasons why deep sea tourism should be stopped

He said there are two main reasons for the break, based on his experience.

“First of all, the sea is dangerous. This is not a playground. The ocean is restless, and I think about it as I look out over the waters of the North Atlantic. They are dark, they are cold; they just want to swallow you if you make the slightest mistake,” he said in an interview with CNN.

“Secondly, what I took away from my trip there is that this is not just a shipwreck. I went there thinking I was just going to report a shipwreck, but what struck me – especially in that moment of prayer, and it dawned on me – was that people had died. Men, women and children. There are more than 1,000 of them. This is their final resting place. This is sacred ground,” he said.

“I think we should stop, understand what happened so that we can solve the problem in the future, but also think about the danger and the sanctity of this place. This is not a walk. This is not a destination for Disneyland,” he said. added

We know less about the bottom of the ocean than about the surface of the moon

“It’s dark there. Very cold. The bottom of the sea is muddy and hilly. You can’t see your hand in front of your face,” Tim Maltin, an expert on diving and the Titanic wreckage, told Reuters.

In addition, there are very few submersibles that can dive as deep as the wreck of the Titanic, which is 3,800 meters.

The ocean floor is full of unknowns, prompting Jamie Pringle, a criminologist at the University of Keele in the UK, to say that “we know more about the surface of the moon than the ocean floor because we just haven’t been explored.”

We remind you that on Thursday, in the search area near the Titanic, an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) discovered a field of wreckage of the small submarine “Titan”, the mooring frame and the cover from the rear part. US authorities announced that the ship had suffered a “catastrophic failure” and five people on board had died.

Warning in 2018

The employee, David Lockridge, said he raised “serious safety concerns” but was ignored.

David Lockridge, a Scottish submarine pilot and diver, started working at OceanGate in 2015 as a freelance service provider before being promoted to director of marine operations, according to court documents.

In the complaint, he claims he was fired in January 2018 after he “raised significant safety concerns about the experimental and untested design” of the Titan submersible.

In 2018, a group of industry leaders also raised concerns about the vessel’s safety and the company’s decision not to certify the Titan through third parties such as the US Bureau of Navigation, the main classifier of submersibles.

The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that a submersible appears to have exploded during an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic on the North Atlantic floor, but a final investigation will take time.

The US Navy’s secret acoustic detection system detected “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion near where the Titan submarine was operating when communications were lost,” the Navy told the Wall Street Journal.

The first deaths at great depth

The five people who died mark the first deep-sea deaths for the industry, according to James Cameron, who became a deep-sea explorer in the 1990s while researching and filming his hit movie Titanic.

Co-owner of Triton Submarines, which manufactures underwater vehicles for research and tourism, he is part of the small and tight-knit submarine community, or manned underwater vehicle (MUV) industry. When he heard many in the industry share that OceanGate Inc. was building a deep-sea submersible with a submarine hull made of carbon fiber and titanium composite, Cameron said he was skeptical.

“I thought it was a terrible idea. I wish I could speak up, but I assumed someone smarter than me, you know, because I’ve never experimented with this technology, but at first glance it sounded bad,” Cameron told Reuters.

According to Cameron, the industry standard is to make pressure vessels out of related materials, such as steel, titanium, ceramic or acrylic, which are better suited for testing.

“We celebrate innovation, don’t we? But you shouldn’t use an experimental vehicle to pay for passengers who aren’t deep-sea engineers themselves,” Cameron said.

Cameron said that both the Titanic and the Titanic tragedies were preceded by failed warnings. In the case of the Titanic, the captain crossed the Atlantic on a moonless night despite being warned about icebergs.

“Here we are again,” Cameron said. “And in the same place. Now a wreck lies next to another wreck for the same damn reason.”