James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 film "Titanic" and has himself made 33 dives to the wreckage, offered some thoughts Thursday after it was announced that a missing Titanic-bound submersible suffered a "catastrophic implosion," killing five people on board.

"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 steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result," Cameron told ABC News. "And with 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."

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