One of the Titan-submersible passengers reportedly once said he wasn't worried about the vessel becoming damaged at the bottom of the ocean because 'under that pressure, you'd be dead before you knew there was a problem'

• A Titan victim once said: "Under that pressure, you'd be dead before you knew there was a problem."
• In a story posted Monday, a journalist recalled having the conversation with Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

One of the passengers killed in the Titan submersible that imploded last month had said recently that he wasn't concerned about structural damage to the vessel while deep underwater because passengers in that situation wouldn't even see death coming.

Travel Weekly's editor in chief, Arnie Weissmann, was scheduled to dive to the Titanic wreckage on OceanGate's Titan submersible in May, a month before it imploded, killing all five people on board. His trip was ultimately canceled due to bad weather.

He wrote about his experience with OceanGate and its Titan submersible in an article published Monday. In it, he recalled an interaction he had with Paul-Henri Nargeolet, the 77-year-old French explorer nicknamed "Mr. Titanic" who had been on 37 successful dives to the Titanic before embarking on OceanGate's deadly trip last month.

"Wreck expert Paul-Henri 'P.H.' Nargeolet, who was also onboard, told me he wasn't worried about what would happen if the structure of the Titan itself were damaged when at the bottom of the ocean: 'Under that pressure, you'd be dead before you knew there was a problem.' He said it with a smile," Weissman wrote of their conversation.

While headed to the Titanic, the Titan suffered a "catastrophic implosion," Coast Guard officials said. Nargeolet was joined on the trip by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, the British billionaire Hamish Harding, and the British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.

Before the June dive, Nargeolet had run into issues on at least one of his expeditions to the Titanic shipwreck, The New York Times reported.

Christine Dawood — Shahzada Dawood's wife and Suleman's mother — told The New York Times that Nargeolet gave a presentation in which he recalled once being "stuck down there for three days and the sub was out of communication."

The Coast Guard has said it started recovering debris and "presumed human remains" from the submersible that will undergo further analysis.