The filmmaker and deep sea exploration enthusiast revealed that he learned of the ship's fate on Monday.
Titanic director and deep sea explorer James Cameron is opening up about when he first learned that the Titan tourist submersible had likely imploded, days before debris was discovered.
On Thursday, Rear Admiral John Mauger, the commander of the U.S. Coast Guard who lead the search and rescue operation, announced that all aboard the vessel -- owned by OceanGate Expeditions -- were presumed "dead" following a "catastrophic implosion" and the discovery of debris.
Cameron, meanwhile, spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper Thursday, and said he'd learned on Monday that the submersible had likely imploded, and that the five passengers had likely been killed.
"I've been living with it for a few days now, as [have] some of my other colleagues in the deep submergence community," Cameron, 68, shared.
According to the filmmaker -- who has spent decades as an active and avid deep sea diver, and has taken over 30 trips to the Titanic wreckage -- he was on a boat by himself on Sunday when Titan undertook its ill-fated plunge.
"Then the first I heard about it was on Monday morning. I immediately got on my network, because it's a very small community... and found out some information within about a half hour that they had lost comms and they had lost tracking simultaneously," Cameron explained. "The only scenario that I could come up with in my mind that would account for that was an implosion."
Cameron went on to explain that he "tracked down some intel that was probably of a military origin, although it could have been research -- because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic -- and got confirmation that there was some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event."
This was "enough of a confirmation" of an implosion for Cameron that he began to let others in his circle of close community contacts know of his theory, and the passengers' likely fate.
"I let all of my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades, and I encouraged everyone to raise a glass in their honor on Monday," Cameron recalled. "[Then I] watched over the ensuing days this whole sort of everybody-running-around-with-their-hair-on-fire search, knowing full well that it was futile."
"Hoping against hope that I was wrong, but knowing in my bones that I wasn't," he added. "So it certainly wasn't a surprise today, and I just feel terrible for the families who had to go through these false hopes that kept getting dangled as it played out."
Cameron previously spoke with ABC News, where he expressed how he'd had concerns about the submersible before it ever hit the water.
"A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified," Cameron told ABC News during an interview about the precautions that came ahead of the mission.
The Canadian filmmaker shared that he saw similarities between the fate of the submersible and the doomed ocean liner.
"I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result," he said. "For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal."
Cameron also took the time to mourn the loss of his friend of 25 years, French explorer Paul-Henri “PH” Nargeolet.
"PH, the French legendary submersible dive pilot was a friend of mine,” Cameron shared. "You know, it’s a very small community. I’ve known PH for 25 years, and for him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process."
On Sunday, Oceangate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Nargeolet, embarked on what was supposed to be a 10-hour journey in the 21-foot submersible that would take them to the site of the Titanic.
One hour and 45 minutes into the journey, the ship lost contact, leading North American and Canadian agencies to work together on a search and rescue mission. Sadly, on Thursday, Rear Admiral Mauger, the commander of the U.S. Coast Guard leading the search, announced that an ROV -- or a remote operated vehicle -- found "five major pieces of debris" that is consistent with the "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber." He added that the vessel was found 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. The nose cone was among the five major pieces of debris found.
"The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel so we'll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time," Mauger said.
Mauger said that, upon this determination, the Coast Guard immediately notified the families, and he offered his "deepest condolences."
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