James Cameron, the director of the famed 1997 film Titanic, has issued his first comments after the OceanGate Titan submersible tragically lost contact and is now believed to have imploded underwater, killing the five passengers on board.

The 68-year-old director famously made 33 dives to the Titanic wreckage site himself.

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“People in the community were very concerned about this sub,” James said in an interview with ABC. “A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified. I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

He also spoke about one of the five passengers that he personally knew, Titanic explorer Paul-Henri “PH” Nargeolet.

“PH, the French legendary submersible dive pilot was a friend of mine,” James said. “You know, it’s a very small community. I’ve known PH for 25 years, and for him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process.”

Debris was found close by the Titanic wreckage site earlier today and it was later confirmed to be wreckage from the Titan submersible.

Our thoughts are with the 5 victims of this tragedy and all of their loved ones during this time.