- An explorer who joined OceanGate on a 2010 expedition said the multi-dive mission turned into a fiasco.
- Scott Cassell said a small mistake flooded the batteries on Stockton Rush's sub.
A 2010 underwater OceanGate expedition in California was cut short when the batteries of the sub were accidentally flooded during a dive, damaging the vessel and forcing CEO Stockton Rush to shut down the rest of the planned dives, three people involved in the project told Insider.
Scott Cassell, an underwater explorer with nearly 30 years of diving experience, said in an interview that he teamed up with OceanGate on the dive mission around Catalina Island off the California coast.
"It just turned out ugly in every way you think about it," Cassell said.
OceanGate's trip to the Titanic last month ended in a deadly disaster, killing five people, including Rush.
Cassell said the costly 2010 error suggested to him that Rush didn't take safety seriously.
"The culture of OceanGate was one of 'Safety is not important,' " Cassell said.
OceanGate declined to comment for this story.
Cassell said OceanGate tapped him in 2009 as a consultant to train their team on how to properly operate the company's sub — a 13 ½-foot vessel called Antipodes rated to travel up to 936 feet deep, according to a planning document for the dive obtained by Insider.
Online records show the American Shipping Bureau classed the vessel as an A1 submersible, meaning it was certified to be up to industry standards.
But Cassell said Rush tried to make tweaks to the submersible, such as adding shackles so it could be towed.
"The Antipodes was a very well-known, very safe-operating, very well–designed machine. And when you have something that passes the American Bureau of Shipping, they classify the sub as-is. If you modify it at all, it's no longer classified," Cassell said.
Cassell said he pointed out the flaws to Rush, who reverted the modifications to the sub and returned it to normal.
"I was very disappointed in how he was trying to make it better," Cassell said. "Like, hey, it's making it worse."
A 2010 mission damaged the Antipodes submersible, 3 people involved said
The mission in 2010 was to be a weekslong collaboration between OceanGate and Cassell's nonprofit, Undersea Voyager Project.
According to the planning document for the dives, the expedition would give researchers the opportunity to learn more about undersea ecosystems around Catalina Island. The mission would also feature the involvement of local high schoolers as "Youth Ambassadors," who would be trained as "mission specialists" and given "operational roles within the oceanographic research expedition," the document states.
"Mission Specialists" is what OceanGate called the passengers on its dives; a former consultant for OceanGate told the New Yorker that the company used the term to avoid legal repercussions if anyone died on an expedition.
The dives began in October 2010, but after just seven of the 30 planned dives, Cassell said Rush asked him to sit out of the eighth dive so Rush could show his "rich friends" the depths of the ocean.
Cassell said a crew member removed a battery pod vent cap from the sub before that eighth dive. He said Rush and the others present on the dive didn't notice the missing cap when they did the pre-dive inspection.
"Every component of the sub is a life support item," Cassell said. "You never play games with any part of the sub.
"To me that's, that was such an elementary thing," he added.
Sidney Loomis, one of the Youth Ambassadors on the 2010 mission, told Insider someone "left the battery hatch open overnight and they flooded and made us leave weeks ahead of schedule.
"It was a whole lot of assuming and no actual fact-checking," Loomis said.
Loomis, who was 16 years old at the time of the expedition, said that the entire expedition "got cut short."
Another person who was also on the expedition — who asked not to be named because they fear the effect it could have on their career — said the dive was "following standard procedure" when the cap was removed to vent hydrogen from the pods. The person's identity is known to Insider.
The person also said Rush wasn't to blame because the pre-dive inspection wasn't his responsibility.
"I'm not defending Stockton, but this particular incident wasn't actually Stockton's fault," the person on the expedition said.
The person on the dive estimated the damage cost about $10,000 to repair and that the company lost up to $100,000 from losing out on taking clients on dives after the Antipodes was damaged.
While Loomis thought the OceanGate dives were "disorganized and chaotic," she said she had a good experience on the mission as one of the students invited aboard — including chats with Rush, who took time to interact with her on the expedition.
"Stockton was so much fun to talk to because he had so many new ideas," Loomis said.