Explorer Chris Brown, a friend of UK billionaire Hamish Harding, said he had paid a deposit to go down on an OceanGate trip but ultimately backed out.
“What explorers do when they take up an expedition, they take a grasp of all the risks in the expedition, to try to mitigate those that they can, they might use different equipment and might bring in the use of experts or mitigate risks by changing the time of year that you do your expedition,” he told Today.
“I had a look at it, it just seemed quite a few risks that were outside my control.”
Brown said OceanGate had a record of missing depth targets and that parts of the submersible seemed, to him, “a bit ad hoc”.
“I just generally got a bit of a bad feeling, so I withdrew from the operation,” he said.
More has emerged in recent days regarding criticism of OceanGate and its operations, particularly regarding its ocean trips.
“The fact that they flatly refused to try and get certification for the vessel didn’t bode well,” Brown said.
Read Related Also: OceanGate posted 'urgent' job listing for pilot – which was scrubbed as search for Titan unfolded
But he said the main issue at the moment was the search for five people who were in extreme danger.
“I just want to see these guys rescued,” he said.
He described Harding as “fiercely intellectual, very grounded, not prone to panic”.
“Whatever the situation, he would be working out the optimal route and try to improve the chances of being found,” Brown said.
But he warned that even if the vessel had bobbed to the surface, the occupants were still in danger.
“Even if it’s come to the surface, it still needs opening from the outside so oxygen would still be an issue,” he said.
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