'OceanGate Came Very, Very Close to Killing Me'

A submersible expert who testified at the Coast Guard's hearing on the catastrophic 2023 implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible Tuesday recounted a harrowing 2019 experience he had aboard the first prototype of the sub. Karl Stanley, who owns a deep-sea diving expedition company, said he went down to about the depth of the Titanic wreckage with three others, including OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush, who was one of the five people killed in last year's disaster. He said Rush had warned the group about cracking sounds in advance, but when they heard them on the dive, it was disturbing. "I think nobody wanted to be the one to say they wanted to go up first," Stanley said. They returned to the surface without incident, but a crack was found in the hull a month later, ABC News reports. More from Tuesday's testimony:

• "OceanGate came very, very close to killing me and had a severe impact on my business as well as an entire industry," Stanley said. More on his testimony here.
• Former OceanGate employee Amber Bay also testified Tuesday. She was the director of administration for the company, and pushed back on a question about whether OceanGate was desperate to complete the dives because participants had paid so much. The company wouldn't "conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need," she said, per the AP. She did acknowledge, though, "There definitely was an urgency to deliver on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal."
• A former OceanGate contractor who previously testified claimed Bay's response to her raising safety concerns was to tell the contractor, "You don't seem to have an explorer mindset." Bay on Tuesday insisted the contractor's concerns had been noted and looked into.

(More OceanGate stories.)