Latest news with #RobMcCallum
NZ Herald
21 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Rob McCallum, the Kiwi adventurer who tried to stop Stockton Rush's Titan OceanGate disaster
Rob McCallum discusses 11,000m dives, Titanic and the deadly deep-sea insanity of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. New Zealander Rob McCallum is a pioneer of deep-sea diving. He's broken the record for the deepest dive in the Mariana Trench – almost 11,000m below sea level. He's worked with the
The Independent
12-06-2025
- General
- The Independent
Two years after Titan disaster, OceanGate advisor reflects on how Stockton Rush swerved ‘every single rule'
Before the traumatic OceanGate explosion that killed five people, submersibles expert Rob McCallum warned its CEO, Stockton Rush, of the dangerous risks. Now, two years on from the incident that killed Rush and his fellow adventurers, and in the wake of an appearance in the new Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, McCallum reveals what he views as the operation's failures. "I have become increasingly amazed and maddened as the levels and many layers of incompetence and deception within OceanGate are exposed,' he told The Independent. 'The epic failure of OceanGate has done great harm to the reputation of legitimate and professional organizations, and set back progress many years,' he said. McCallum, founder, expedition leader, and divemaster of Eyos expeditions, a company which does similar work with submersibles, said there were plenty of 'little individual warning signs' ahead of the monumental failure of the Titan sub on June 18, 2023. The Titan, for example, was never certified or classed. The experimental submersible vanished on June 18, 2023, while on a tour of the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic Ocean. On board were Rush, 61, British explorer Hamish Harding, 58, veteran French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. The Titan imploded around 90 minutes into a descent, killing all five on board. Last month, a video showing the moment Wendy Rush first hears the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub's support ship was released. "What was that bang?" she asks. The eerie video has been used as evidence in a wider ongoing investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation, which has spent the last two years looking into the sub's cataclysmic failure. The final report, which McCallum suspects will be damning, is in its final stages according to the Coast Guard, who told The Independent the Marine Board of Investigation is 'pressing to release it by the end of the month.' McCallum believes Rush is going to be the one held responsible and he expects the report will reveal 'a concerted effort by a businessman to work around every single rule in the book to start a business and to make money.' He says that a decade before the tragedy, between 2009-16, OceanGate frequently sought his advice. 'They used to come down and talk to us about how you could establish a business, how you could buy a submarine, how you would maintain a submarine, and where you could find crew. They used to come and talk to us about getting themselves set up.' But Rush's timeline for the deployment of the Titan sub kept being pushed back. The sub's chief pilot, Dave Lochridge, was fired in 2018, days after submitting his report about the inefficiency of OceanGate's hull design and the company's testing methods. He was then sued by the company for breach of contract and revealing company secrets. He countersued for wrongful dismissal. 'There were always excuses,' McCallum said. 'But the net result is that the timeline kept shifting. He [Rush] would say 'we're going out there in 2020, wait, 2021. No, we're definitely going in 2022, then 2023'.' The divemaster said that his advisory services ceased 'as soon as they decided they were going to build an unclassed sub.' One of the biggest criticisms of OceanGate was the Titan's use of a carbon fibre hull, which is widely believed to be unsuitable for deep-sea diving. Typically, the main raw material used to construct modern submarines is steel. 'Senior staff and board members read Lochridge's report and knew that their chief of staff was telling them that this thing is a death trap,' McCallum said. 'People had read that report and still carried on, and are complicit in what happened next,' he said. The new documentary on the tragedy, released Wednesday, will 'illustrate where the blame lies, and who should be held accountable,' he said. McCallum stressed that the OceanGate disaster does not represent the submersibles industry as a whole. 'Professionally built submersibles have a perfect safety record that stretches back over 50 years,' he said. 'OceanGate has demonstrated the folly of experimental 'DIY' vehicles, and I expect there will now be incoming legislation to prevent others from building sub-standard vehicles.'
Daily Mirror
28-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
'I talked dozens out of lethal Titan sub trip - one refused and now he's dead'
Ahead of the disaster that will be revisited in tonight's chilling BBC documentary 'Implosion: The Titan Sub Disaster on BBC, expedition consultant Rob McCallum tried to warn Stockton Rush he had "huge concerns" about his submersible One of OceanGate 's top former advisors "talked dozens of clients" out of a trip on the infamous Titan submersible - as it was placing passengers at "extreme risk." The tragedy will be explored in tonight's BBC documentary, 'Implosion: The Titan Sub Disaster, and expedition consultant Rob McCallum previously told how he tried to warn OceanGate boss Stockton Rush in email messages that he had "huge concerns" about his sub. Mr McCallum has led dives to the Titanic shipwreck and other deep-sea spots. In each of these dives, the submersible being used had been approved to reach extreme depths having been classified by a marine classification society. OceanGate's Titan submersible had not. Mr McCallum tried to convince OceanGate boss Stockton Rush that he was placing clients at "extreme risk" during now infamous email exchanges - and even talked prospective customers out of getting in the sub. Speaking exclusively to The Mirror, he said: "I had tried to convince Stockton Rush he was placing himself and his clients at extreme risk during email exchanges 2021-2018. Between 2020-23 I talked dozens of clients out of riding in Titan. Only four actually went and sadly, one of them perished (Hamish Harding). Hamish had dived Challenger Deep with us." Full timeline of Titan sub disappearance Sunday, June 18 Titan submerged at 8am local time with five people onboard and a 96-hour oxygen supply. Operator OceanGate Expeditions lost contact with the sub an hour and 45 minutes later. The Titan was due to resurface at 3pm local time and never did. Monday, June 19 US Coast Guard, Canadian Coast Guard and Canadian Armed Forces launch search for missing submersible. Tuesday, June 20 At 7am local time, the search expands as crews are "looking for any signs of surfacing". First reports of "banging" picked up by radar begin to make headlines. Wednesday, June 21 US Coast Guard announced that a Canadian aircraft with sonar capabilities had "detected underwater noises in the search area". Investigations were continuing to find the "origin of the noises", but they had "yielded negative results". Thursday, June 22 At 7am local time, authorities had not found the Titan sub and the 96-hour oxygen supply was forecasted to run out in the morning. By 11.48am, the US Coast Guard tweeted that "a debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic" and experts were "evaluating the information". At 2.49pm, OceanGate Expeditions issued a statement saying that all five people aboard were believed to be dead. During a press conference shortly after, the US Coast Guard said it found the tail cone of the Titan sub about 1,600 feet from the bow of the wrecked Titanic. Five pieces of the Titan were recovered including the nose cone and pressure hull. The vessel lost contact with its mother ship on June 18, 2023, nearly an hour and a half into its journey carrying five people some 13,000 feet underwater to visit the shipwreck of the Titanic site. The expert said he had "huge concerns" over the safety of the vehicle which was never classified or approved by maritime safety. An investigation into the implosion is due to deliver its findings in the next couple of weeks. Mr McCallum added: "Primarily my huge concerns about safety. I would NEVER put clients in an unclassed vehicle, and because Titan was constructed of composite materials it was never going to be classed. That is a show-stopper." Two years since the catastrophic implosion which killed Stockton Rush, 61, Hamish Harding, 58, Pakistani tycoon, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19, and French Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, clients have been getting in contact with Mr McCallum to thank him for telling them to avoid the submarine. He added: "A dozen or so (clients) in the weeks after the implosion and now a few more as the anniversary approaches (have approached him). For folks that were thinking of going in Titan, they are grateful for the advice that persuaded them not to." Despite the catastrophic implosion, Mr McCallum believes the submarine industry is safe and that OceanGate was an "outlier" that "went to great lengths" to avoid industry standards. "I think most people can see that Oceangate was an outlier entity operating outside of the industry norms….and in fact they went to great lengths to work around all of the industry standards" he said. "The Titan implosion demonstrated that the penalties for circumventing sound engineering principles and ignoring safety standards is a terrible one."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Former OceanGate staffers say CEO Stockton Rush 'wanted fame' and describe him as a 'borderline psychopath' in new Netflix documentary trailer
Netflix is releasing a documentary about the OceanGate Titan submersible disaster. The sub imploded in 2023 while descending to view the Titanic wreck, killing all five people on board. The documentary takes a closer look at the incident and the late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. An upcoming Netflix documentary is set to take a closer look at the Titan submersible's ill-fated journey to the wreck of the Titanic two years ago. "Titan: The OceanGate Disaster" arrives on Netflix on June 11 and will examine the events leading up to the doomed expedition that killed OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and four others after the vessel carrying them to view the wreck imploded in June 2023. The trailer for the documentary shows interviews with several people close to the late exec and who worked for the expedition company. "There was no way of knowing when Titan was going to fail," Rob McCallum, a former OceanGate advisor, says in the trailer. "But it was a mathematical certainty that it would fail." The trailer also teases interviews with ex-OceanGate staff members like Tony Nissen, a former engineering director at the firm, Bonnie Carl, a human resources and finance director, and David Lochridge, an operations director who previously said he was fired after raising safety concerns about the sub. In the trailer, Lochridge says he thought Rush "wanted fame" to "fuel his ego," while Nissen adds that he thought Stockton was "a borderline psychopath." Elsewhere in the clip, Carl recalls her reaction after she said Rush announced she would be the company's next sub pilot: "Are you nuts? I'm an accountant." As well as testimonies from key figures, "Titan: The OceanGate Disaster" will also feature "pivotal" audio recordings and footage from OceanGate's early days, per the documentary's synopsis. Speaking in an interview with Netflix's Tudum, director Mark Monroe said he had been "horrified and mesmerized" by the coverage and social commentary on the sub and that he hoped the documentary could provide answers about how the disaster happened. "The more I dug into this terrible tragedy, the more intrigued I became about how this could have ever happened in the first place, and who exactly was the man who built and then went down with this ship," he said. "We hope that this film can help provide answers to these very questions." Earlier this week, the US Coast Guard released footage showing the moment that Rush's wife, Wendy Rush, heard the apparent sound of the Titan submersible imploding. Wendy can be seen trying to contact the sub from a support vessel when a loud slamming sound can be heard through a monitor. "What was that bang?" she said. The submersible lost communication with the support vessel — the Polar Prince — around an hour and 45 minutes into its dive, sparking a dramatic four-day search and rescue effort. Debris from the Titan was eventually found by a remotely operated vehicle around 500 meters (roughly 1,640 feet) from the bow of the Titanic, which lies around 12,500 feet below the surface. Alongside Rush, British pilot and adventurer Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and former French Navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet died in the incident. Read the original article on Business Insider
