WORLD news media for four days is locked on the missing Titanic submarine in the North Atlantic.

I worked myself on the ship-board side of a dive support vessel in the 1970s.

Highly trained professional deep sea divers spend thirty days at a time in saturation chambers.

Twelve hours shifts operating on the sea floor from a diving bell.

Then 12 hours in saturation chambers, 20 feet by seven feet diameter, back on the dive support ship.

During all this time breathing a mixture of oxygen and helium to match diving depth pressures.

You need nerves of steel.

Very level temperament.

Huge endurance.

Not a place by any means for amateurs.

On the missing Titanic sub operated by OceanGate Expeditions, as far as we know the vessel had very little certification, being operated as an experimental project.

An absolute horror story.

A major disaster waiting to happen.

On one count no-one should be diving on what is an ocean grave.

It should be left in peace in memory of all who died so terribly 15th April 1912. Not turned into a commercial tourist enterprise.

On a second count – astonishing that any paying passengers, so called adventurers, should be taken as tourists on the dives.

And on a third count – hundreds died when a refugee boat sank off Greece last week, with reports of children stuck in holds.

So terrible but that passes out of the news cycle within 48-hours.

The Titanic sub is a terrible tragedy. For all of us our worst nightmare.

But then hugely expensive adventurism when we have so much real need to deal with.

JEFF WILLIAMS

Address supplied