NEW YORK — A former OceanGate employee got emotional while remembering the people killed in the catastrophic implosion of the company's Titan submersible during a hearing on the incident Tuesday.
"I had the privilege of knowing the explorers whose lives were lost," Amber Bay, former OceanGate director of administration, said during the U.S. Coast Guard hearing. "There's not a day that passes that I don't think of them, their families and their loss. It's been a difficult year for them, for all of us."
OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush, French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, were killed when the Titan imploded during a deep-sea voyage to the Titanic wreckage in June 2023.
Bay said she believes the teenager was the youngest person to ever dive on the Titan, and that there were "no true misgivings" about his age ahead of the dive.
"Stockton had spoke to the family directly on a few occasions and met with them personally," she said. "So there was no concerns once they had been spoken with and understood. Everyone understood and was ready and excited to dive."
Bay started working for OceanGate in December 2018. She said part of her duties included the care of the "mission specialists" -- what the company called those who paid to go on dives -- during expeditions.
She described a mission specialist, who paid $250,000 for the Titan dive, as someone who was "curious about deep-sea exploration" and understood that "this wasn't a luxury trip."
"As Stockton put it, there was no chocolate on the pillow," she said. "They were invited to be involved and take an active role as much as possible as they wanted to."
Towing concerns
Bay said she was present for all Titan missions in 2021 and 2022, as well as the first three in 2023 -- missing the fourth and fifth, which would turn out to be the last, due to a family obligation.
OceanGate utilized the Horizon Arctic as its support ship in 2021 and 2022, though the vessel was no longer available in 2023 so they started utilizing the Polar Prince, she said. The 2023 missions started earlier in the year than previous missions due to the Polar Prince's availability, she said.
Asked if she had any concerns about towing the Titan the 370 nautical miles to the Titanic wreck site, she said, "Certainly."
"I think anybody would have, you know, concerns that this was going to be more challenging and more difficult in some aspects," she said. "Stockton assured us that he was up for the challenge and the team was up for the challenge."
She noted differences in the weather and water conditions on the 2023 missions compared to previous years.
"The seas were much higher than earlier on, than I remember being on the Horizon Arctic," she said. "It was much colder. There's a lot of rain."
Asked if the Titan was ever damaged during the towing that year, she said she believed the vessel lost or damaged a fairing -- a plastic cover that goes over the sub, "just like a car bumper." She said on one or two occasions the platform also took on water and started to list.
Bay refutes prior witness testimony
A former OceanGate contractor who testified during the hearing last week, Antonella Wilby, told investigators about a conversation she had with Bay about a 2022 dive, during which passengers heard a loud bang as the Titan was ascending.
Wilby testified that when she brought up a customer's concerns about the loud bang to Bay, Bay told her, "You have a bad attitude. You don't have an explorer mindset. You know, we're innovative and we're cowboys, and a lot of people can't handle that."
Asked to explain those remarks on Tuesday, Bay refuted the testimony.
"I don't believe that either of those statements is exactly what I had said," she said.
She said Wilby's concerns were "looked into and notated," though she had no knowledge of what she was specifically referencing.
Bay said she did not deal with safety concerns and would refer people to the head of engineering, the director of operations and Rush.
"I did ask her if she did have concerns, to bring those up to those particular people," Bay said.
She said she believed OceanGate staff felt comfortable raising safety concerns with Rush.
"I wasn't witness to those types of meetings, but I was witness to people saying, 'Oh yeah, I talked to Stockton about that today,'" she said.
OceanGate's financial problems
At the beginning of 2023, OceanGate's finances were "getting very tight," and employees were asked to have their paychecks deferred once, Bay said.
"We were looking to make ends meet, and if we were able to defer our paychecks, there was an offer that Stockton had derived -- I believe with an attorney or whomever -- that we could delay our paychecks and be paid a small amount of interest and recaptured at a specific time," she said.
She said she and Rush delayed their paychecks once.
Phil Brooks, the former engineering director of OceanGate, testified on Monday that he left the company in February 2023 in part due to the financial issues.
"It was clear that the company was economically very stressed," he said.
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.
The two-week hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.