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James Cameron, director of the Titanic movie, warned of the dangers of visiting the legendary shipwreck after making 33 dives to the bottom of the ocean to film his smash hit.
‘You’re going into one of the most unforgiving places on earth,’ the Academy Award-winning director said in a 2012 interview.
‘It’s not like you can call up AAA to come get you,’ he warned.
The comments have resurfaced as an enormous search mission looks for a group of five missing Titanic tourists.
The missing OceanGate submersible, the Titan, lost contact with the mothership during its descent to the shipwreck Sunday morning. That sparked an international response to find the missing ship before air runs out.
James Cameron, director of the Titanic movie, warned of the dangers of visiting the legendary shipwreck
Academy Award winning director James Cameron journeyed to the 1912 shipwreck while working on the Titanic movie
However, despite the risks, Cameron said that witnessing what ‘human beings have never seen before’ was better than ‘red carpets and all that glitzy stuff.’
Cameron, who has written a book about exploring and documenting the Titanic, has visited the wreck more than 30 times.
‘I can think of no greater fantasy than to be an explorer and see what no human eye has seen before,’ the explorer said in an interview in 2011.
Cameron first visited the wreck in 1995 on board a Russian-owned submersible in order to capture footage for the Titanic movie.
‘I’ve owned and operated my own submarines and pretty much know everybody in the deep-ocean world outside of the oil business,’ he told The Times in 2010.
The Academy Award-winning director has yet to comment publicly about the missing submarine.
Parks Stephenson, who served as the technical director for Cameron’s epic 1997 film said Monday he feared the missing submarine could be ‘a major tragedy’.
‘No matter what you may read in the coming hours, all that is truly known at this time is that communications with the submersible have been lost and that is unusual enough to warrant the most serious consideration,’ the Titanic expert wrote in a Monday Facebook post.
Stephenson and Cameron wrote a book on their exploration of the Titanic wreck
Cameron first visited the wreck in 1995 on board a Russian-owned submersible , in order to capture footage for the Titanic movie
Parks Stephenson has warned the submersible currently missing could be ‘a major tragedy’
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Tourists and explorers began their descent to the wreck but lost contact with the mothership on Sunday morning
The missing OceanGate submersible, the Titan, lost contact with the mothership during its descent to the shipwreck on Sunday morning
‘I am most concerned about the souls aboard,’ said Stephenson, who has made the journey to the legendary wreck himself.
Stephenson journeyed with Cameron to the 1912 shipwreck while they worked on the film that eventually grossed over $2 billion at the box office.
Last night hopes of finding the missing Titan five grew after rescue groups reported ‘likely signs of life’ and ‘banging sounds.’
A Canadian Aircraft, part of the enormous search mission looking for the missing Titanic tourists, heard ‘banging’ at 30-minute intervals in the area the submarine disappeared.
The banging was noted in emails exchanged with the US Department of Homeland Security and seen by Rolling Stone.
Richard Garriot de Cayeux, President of The Explorers Club, confirmed in a Tuesday night social media post that ‘there is cause for hope.’
In a statement he said: ‘We have much greater confidence that 1) There is cause for hope, based on data from the field – we understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site.’
Coast Guard officials confirmed underwater noises were heard by a plane and operations were ‘relocated’ to determine the origin. As of early Wednesday, they have ‘yielded negative results’.
Billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and Shahzada Dawood, 48, a UK-based board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, are reported to be the people stuck in the sub.
The DHS memo on the banging sounds read: ‘RCC Halifax launched a P8, Poseidon, which has underwater detection capabilities from the air,’ the DHS memo read, ‘reported a contact in a position close to the distress position.
‘The P8 heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes. Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and banging was still heard.’
The timing – or cause – of the banging is not revealed by the memo.
Garriot de Cayeux added The Explorers Club are confident the U.S. Coast Guard ‘precisely understand the experienced personnel and tech we can deeply’ and ‘believe they are doing everything possible with all resources they have’.
One of the five men on the ship, Harding, is a founding member of the Board of Trustees for the Explorers Club.
The group said they have direct lines to Congress, The Coast Guard, Air Force and Nave and the White House.
