Tony Nissen, OceanGate's former engineering director, testified at a Coast Guard hearing Monday that he was fired after he expressed concerns about the Titan submersible and refused to greenlight a planned expedition. He said he felt pressured by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush to get the vessel ready to dive, the AP reports. Nissen, the hearing's first witness, testified that Rush wanted him to pilot missions to the wreck of the Titanic, but he refused. "I told him, 'I'm not getting in it,'" Nissen said. He said he didn't trust the operations crew, "but I didn't trust Stockton either," reports NBC News.
Nissen was hired in 2016 and fired in 2019, four years before the submersible imploded, killing Rush and four others. He testified that Rush was difficult to work for and that most people "would eventually back down" to him. Nissen said the experimental submersible's hull may have been compromised when it was hit by lightning in 2018, the AP reports. Investigators revealed Monday that there had been dozens of problems in earlier Titan expeditions, including 70 in 2021, reports the New York Times.
Less than a month before the doomed June 18, 2023, mission, the Titan, which had been stored outside in Newfoundland with no protection from the elements, was found partially sunk "after a night of heavy seas and fog," investigators said in a "Basic Factual Information" presentation. The hearing is expected to last two weeks. Another witness, former OceanGate finance director Bonnie Carl, said she quit in early 2018 over safety concerns, the Times reports. She said she saw unsupervised young engineers, some in their late teens, "wrenching on the sub." "It became abundantly clear to me that OceanGate was not the place I wanted to work, if that was their attitude toward safety," she said. (The final message from the Titan was "All good here.")
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