The scientific director for OceanGate, which owned the doomed Titan submersible that imploded last year on an expedition to see the Titanic, told an investigative panel Thursday that the sub malfunctioned only days before it descended into the North Atlantic for its final, deadly dive.
Steven Ross told the U.S. Coast Guard panel that the malfunction rocked the submersible during that dive, causing people on board to "tumble about" as the OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush crashed into bulkheading. Ross said he did not know if the hull of the Titan was evaluated after the incident.
"One passenger was hanging upside down," said Ross. "The other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow end cap."
Earlier, the Coast Guard heard testimony from Renata Rojas, a mission specialist for OceanGate with ties to the company stretching back several years, who fulfilled that role on the doomed Titan mission after completing previous dives with Rush and operation director David Lochridge. Lochridge, in his own scathing testimony before the panel, on Tuesday said the company's primary goal was to turn a profit and "very little" science was involved.
But Rojas told a different story. As a career banker with a lifetime passion for underwater exploring and a particular interest in the Titanic shipwreck, she said everyone tied to OceanGate and the Titan submersible expedition was fueled by a similar curiosity and sense of adventure.
"I was learning a lot and working with amazing people," Rojas said. "Some of those people are very hardworking individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true."
Rojas told the panel she was aware the Titan hadn't been inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard and wasn't built, or classed, to meet industry standards. She said the company made clear to anyone participating in its dives that the missions they were carrying out and the technology they were using was "experimental."
"I found them to be very transparent about everything," she said. "Anybody could ask any questions, and if you asked questions, like 'I want to see the monitoring systems for this dive,' it's like, 'Come on. I'll show it to you.'"
Rojas said the company was honest about the Titan, in that "it was experimental and not classified." But she still felt safe boarding the submersible to visit the site of the Titanic during a previous dive.
"I knew what I was doing was very risky," she said. "I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation."
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