HOUSTON – As the nation is left questioning what occurred during this week’s horrific OceanGate submersible implosion, there are a select few people who have made the voyage and returned back to shore safely.
KPRC 2′s Houston Life co-host Derrick Shore is one of those few.
More than 20 years ago, Shore was sent on an assignment as a young, 19-year-old reporter to go visit the Titanic wreckage site.
He, his producer John, and their pilot Jena took the 12-hour journey to the site which is two and a half miles deep into the ocean.
Adventure of a lifetime, without a contingency plan
Shore said while the assignment was exciting, he also knew it was going to be a challenge.
“I knew that I would be in this submersible for 12 hours with no bathroom, with a little lunchbox with food and some water but 12 hours in a mini-sub this size is not a comfortable trip. But it was the adventure of a lifetime,” Shore said.
Shore said there were three people on the submersible and the quarters were tight.
“Jena speaks fluent Russian, doesn’t really speak English. John and I speak English, we did not speak Russian,” Shore explained. “There were three of us on this sub in very tight quarters and we really had no means of communication... It wasn’t until we were on the ocean floor I realized, ‘Oh wow, it might have been helpful if we had had some training on this. We didn’t have a contingency plan, and so if something went wrong, we knew that there were huge risks.”
Shore said the group had a general idea of what the trip would be like beforehand. Knowing that there would be no bathroom onboard, the group didn’t drink much water or eat much food in the days leading up to the trip.
“While there is a plastic bottle onboard underneath the seat, nobody wanted to be in that situation,” Shore said. “No one wanted to use a plastic bottle.”
A mother’s worry
Shore recalled his mother being nervous ahead of the journey.
“My mother was so nervous. She was back home in Salt Lake City, Utah, hoping and praying all day long,” he said. “Essentially, we took a boat from St. John’s, Newfoundland and we were at sea for a day and a half before we reached the surface of the North Atlantic, where we would be going straight down to the Titanic.”
Once the group got to the spot, they boarded a research ship where there were two mini submersibles, which were also reportedly used in the “Titanic” film that James Cameron directed.
“We boarded one of the subs early in the morning. We had life jackets getting in because the boarding process is a little bit tricky, and once we climbed in through the hatch, which is a small opening in the top of the submersible, I went in. They cranked that hatch and we were in there,” Shore said. “The shape of our submersible, while it looks elongated, the actual passenger compartment is a sphere, because that is the strongest possible shape. So when you have the pressure of the ocean compressing that sphere, that’s the safest possible scenario.”
It got dark very quickly
Once the submersible was placed into the water, Shore was in awe of the bright blue water he saw while looking out of the 9-inch thick windows.
“It got dark very, very quickly within just a couple minutes of getting into the water and starting our descent,” Shore said. “And the deeper we got, the colder it got. And every second, we were dropping meter by meter until two and a half miles and two hours had gone by.”
As the temperatures dropped, the crew put on more clothes. After several hours, they finally made it to the bottom. That’s when Shore says he saw a familiar shape. It was the bow of the Titanic.
“It’s hard to imagine that this is it,” he was captured saying in old video footage while on the voyage. He described the sight as “magical.”
“I was feeling all kinds of things because I remember as a child in elementary school in the 80s is when the wreckage was discovered on the sea floor,” Shore recalled. “I remember reading books about it and studying about it in school. I think many of us have this fascination with the Titanic. Of 2,200 people onboard, 1,500 of them, passengers and crewmembers, died. And so as fascinating as the journey was for me, it’s also very haunting to realize you’re visiting the gravesite of so many people who died.”
‘Not a good sign... What do we do now?’
Part of the expedition was to retrieve artifacts by using robotic arms attached to the submersible. The crew started at the front of the ship and moved to the back, which is separate. Shore said at one point, the submersible began having mechanical issues.
“We weren’t really able to communicate about what was going on,” Shore said. “And on his radio, he (Jena) was also speaking Russian, so we couldn’t hear what the person on the other end was saying.”
Shore said at one point, the left side of the submersible lost power.
“We were sort of leaning to one side and a couple times even, our pilot Jena reached over and kind of banged on the wall, banged on the instrument panel. That was not a good sign,” Shore said. “And in that moment, I remember thinking, ‘OK, what do we do now? Is there going to be an issue getting back to the surface?’ We weren’t tethered, we were two and a half miles down, I knew we had a limited oxygen supply, and I wondered, ‘What would go wrong if we lost power entirely?’ At that depth, there are very few pieces of technology that can, first of all, reach you, but secondly, tow you back to the surface.”
Shore said the group had a long time to think about possible outcomes since the submersible was disabled for a while. Finally, Jena gave up and flooded the ballast tanks of the submersible with air so that it could resurface. The process took about three hours.
“The moment I knew we were done and we actually were able to start going back up, that was a huge relief.”
Shore said that while he knew the trip was dangerous, he didn’t realize how dangerous it was until he reached the surface. One of the scientists onboard the research ship explained that at that depth in the ocean, one should imagine 150 million pounds of water crushing down on the mini submersible.
“I can’t imagine how the families are feeling right now,” Shore said. “The entire world has been holding their breaths the past few days wondering about these five passengers.”
While Shore’s trip to the Titanic wreckage was one to remember, he doesn’t plan on making the voyage again.
WATCH DERRICK SHORE’S FULL INTERVIEW ABOUT HIS TRIP IN A SUBMERSIBLE ABOVE
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