An investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard is ongoing; some debris from the wreckage has been salvaged, but the implosion was so violent and comprehensive that the precise cause of the disaster may never be known.

Until June 18th, a manned deep-ocean submersible had never imploded. But, to McCallum, Lahey, and other experts, the OceanGate disaster did not come as a surprise—they had been warning of the submersible’s design flaws for more than five years, filing complaints to the U.S. government and to OceanGate itself, and pleading with Rush to abandon his aspirations. As they mourned Nargeolet and the other passengers, they decided to reveal OceanGate’s history of knowingly shoddy design and construction. “You can’t cut corners in the deep,” McCallum had told Rush. “It’s not about being a disruptor. It’s about the laws of physics.”

[Last week, well-known archaeologist and explorer Josh Gates from Discovery’s “Expedition Unknown” talked about his own disturbing experience with Titan and his refusal to do a second dive with it. He said at the time that there were many disturbing issues with OceanGate and Titan that had been not yet made public, but which he had found out on his own. Ben Taub appears to have uncovered most of that, including how experts tried to warn Stockton Rush to stop using Titan, how authorities were repeatedly alerted to the issues, and how Rush bullied a former key employee into silence rather than address the many defects he had found. Be sure to read it all; it’s shocking. — Ed]