Former Titan passenger shreds ‘absolutely ridiculous’ safety claims

One day after the U.S. Coast Guard announced the tragic loss of the Titan submersible crew, a former passenger of the deep-sea vessel passionately defended its safety and testing priorities – as well as the exploration’s founder.

“The idea that safety was not the top priority is absolutely ridiculous. Safety is an incredible priority and was always the most important thing there,” explorer Aaron Newman said on “Mornings with Maria” Friday.

The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed Thursday that a debris field found earlier in the day was the missing Titan submersible, which set off to tour the Titanic shipwreck site Sunday morning before losing contact only an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters that the debris was consistent with the “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”

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Inside the vessel were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush; British businessman turned adventurer Hamish Harding; father-and-son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, who are members of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families; and Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French navy officer and leading Titanic expert.

“If you look at a guy like P.H. Nargeolet, who was on board, this guy had more experience in subs than anyone else in the world, and he would have known if this was not a good idea,” Newman argued. “He would have had the experience to assess whether this was not properly done.”

Newman, who visited the Titanic with Rush in August of 2021, claimed the CEO’s wife “was always there looking over his shoulder” to ensure everything was done properly and safely.

“Now Stockton, the thing that he may be guilty of is not following the crowd, not listening and doing what everybody else wanted him to do,” the explorer said. “He was always the first one in the sub… so it’s very easy to attack a man who can’t defend themselves at this point.”

During Newman’s excursion to see the sunken Titanic, he detailed a scene that was like “being on another planet.”

“It was one of the most amazing experiences between settling at the bottom and seeing a cloud of mud come around you, to just traversing through this enormous hunk of rock, of metal that’s just corroding,” he detailed. “And it was an amazing, life-changing type of experience.”

While expressing his sadness that there wasn’t a “Hollywood ending,” Newman also noted feeling some peace in knowing the Titan passengers felt little “suffering.”

“The question is, how do we find a silver lining out of this? How do we make this a positive?” the explorer said. “How do we really get the attention of people that the ocean floor and ocean exploration is important, and we aren’t looking at it the way that we should be?”

In a press release Thursday, OceanGate recognized the lost crew members as “true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans.”

The Coast Guard’s RADM Mauger additionally clarified in Thursday’s media briefing that the unmanned sub that discovered the debris “will remain on scene and continue to gather information.”

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Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.