A Frenchman aboard the missing submersible had previously spoken of the dangers of diving underwater, even aboard a submersible.
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A few years ago, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former diver in the French navy, spoke of the dangers of ending up in the deep sea.
In interview in 2019 at Irish Examinerhe said: “[Sous l’eau] you died before you realized anything was wrong.”
AFP
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, is a former diver in the French navy, he is nicknamed Monsieur Titanic.
He was asked at the time if he had ever been afraid to dive to 12,500 feet to reach the wreckage of the titanic.
“Whether you’re at 11m or 11km, if something bad happens, the outcome is the same,” he said. When you’re in really deep water, you’re dead before you know what happened.”
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a specialist in piloting submersibles, broke the record for the deepest dive in a submersible, at 35,853 feet below the surface.
In 1987, he was part of the first human expedition to visit the wreck of the titanicdiscovered two years earlier by the famous explorer Robert Ballard, reports the Telegram.
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He has since visited the ghostly ship at least 35 times and was the first person to recover a remnant from the site, a silver plaque.
He has also previously admitted that he sometimes takes luck a little too far to reach the ship.
“You stop four, five, six, seven…eight hours, which is the longest, and even then you don’t really want to come back up. Sometimes I go to the end of the batteries and sometimes even more than the end, he said last year. Indeed, I was reprimanded several times for having done so,” he added.
Also on board for the $250,000 dive was a Pakistani tycoon, Shahzada Dawood, vice president of conglomerate Engro, on board with his son, Suleman, according to the wealthy family, who confirmed that “the contact (had ) been lost” since Sunday.
The US Coast Guard, which is leading the search, told ABC News on Tuesday through their Rear Admiral John Mauger that they have “also deployed underwater search capabilities” with “remotely piloted vehicles”.
AFP
Designed to take five people into the abyss, approximately 6.50 m long, the Titan began its descent on Sunday and contact with the craft was lost less than two hours after it set off, authorities said.
The US Coast Guard then dispatched two planes to the search area in the North Atlantic, and their Canadian counterparts mobilized a plane and a ship. France announced on Tuesday that the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) was also sending a boat and its robot.