Ray Dalio, founder of the Westport hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, weighed in on the deaths of five men aboard the OceanGate submersible last week, citing the loss of life as a tragedy that should have been avoided.
Dalio took to Twitter for his comments, which he made in his role as co-founder of OceanX, an initiative to explore the depths of the oceans and to share its findings through educational and entertainment media. He noted “there was some chance that one or more of OceanX’s underwater vehicles could help in the search for the passengers” when the news broke that the OceanGate fell out of communications contact while descending to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, but he also noted that “given the simultaneous disappearance of all the vehicle”™s systems and other indications, the consensus among the undersea community quickly became that the vehicle had had a catastrophic implosion.”
Although Dalio did not cite OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush ”“ who was among the five killed last week ”“ he expressed “great anger because I knew that the tragedy was due to reckless disregard for tried-and-true safety protocols that have made manned submersible exploration extremely safe. I knew that OceanGate had created its own experimental vehicle with materials avoided by others, decided to bypass the certification processes designed to assure safety, and chose to ignore the warnings from many experts within the submersible community.”
Dalio noted that submersibles operating under the certification processes that OceanGate avoided have operated without incident over the last 40 years, going to depths greater than the ill-fated journey to the Titanic.
“In other words, submersible diving, and the ocean exploration that it provides, has been safer than flying on a commercial airplane or driving in a car,” he stated. “So the needlessness of this tragedy was shocking to me.”
The U.S. Navy belatedly acknowledged it was aware of the fatal implosion when it occurred last Sunday but stayed silent on its awareness until the debris from the wreckage was located four days later. However, Dalio questioned the media coverage without citing the Navy’s silence over the information it held.
“I wondered how much of it was being provided as news without wanting to convey the full picture until the definitive end out of consideration for the missing people’s family and friends ”“ and how much of it was to pursue a nail-biting story to hold people’s attention,” he added. “In the end, I felt that it was all so tragic.”
