NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – OceanGate took a former contractor off her position after she voiced safety concerns, according to her testimony during day four of a Coast Guard inquiry into why a submersible set to explore the Titanic imploded.
Former OceanGate contractor Antonella Wilby said she noticed several issues during a Titan test dive to the Titanic while operating as a communications navigation specialist.
She said the Titan had an acoustic position system. Navigation would look at the sonar software on a computer, manually write the coordinates, type the coordinates into Excel, and then import the Excel sheet into a location map, which would create a layer over a map of the Titanic’s remains.
According to Wilby, the maps were layered manually, which could cause issues because they weren’t fixed.
“You might be looking at this map and plotting the pings and thinking, oh, maybe the Titanic is, you know, 50 meters to the west, when in fact, it was the map itself had shifted,” Wilby explained.