Summary of the day's Titan submersible tragedy updates
Here are some of the day’s highlights:
The aunt of the 19-year-old killed aboard the Titan said the young man was gravely afraid of going on the exploration. But he did so to please his father.
Online commenters and journalists are calling out Stockton Rush, the CEO and co-founder of OceanGate who was killed onboard the Titan submersible, for his goals of using his deep sea exploration tourism as a cost-effective tool for oil and gas companies.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has announced that it is launching an investigation into the loss of the Titan sub. A team of investigators is now traveling to St John’s, Newfoundland, to “gather information, conduct interviews, and assess the occurrence”, it said.
UK and US officials picked up a “large acoustic signal” indicating an implosion of the Titan sub days ago, but did not release the information to the public or some members of the rescue teams because it was classified, according to a UK naval source.
OceanGate, the company behind the Titan submersible, exaggerated details of the industry partnerships behind the development and engineering of its sub. Boeing and the University of Washington have denied the company’s claim that they helped design the sub.
Updated
Online commenters and journalists are calling out Stockton Rush, the CEO and co-founder of OceanGate who was killed onboard the Titan submersible, for his goals of using his deep sea exploration tourism as a cost-effective tool for oil and gas companies.
His father, Richard Stockton Rush Jr, is the chairman of Peregrine oil and gas company based in northern California. In addition to his familial ties to the industry, Stockton Rush sought to sell his submersibles as a tool for companies who want to explore deep sea drilling opportunities but aren’t willing to pay for the machinery that would support that field research.
In a 2017 Fast Company article, Rush said that OceanGate wouldn’t be involved in oil production, but instead were, “just going to be involved in inspection, repair, and maintenance”.
Click here to read the Fast Company piece in it entirety.
feels so relevant that Stockton Rush was in the tourist submersibles business bc he ultimately wanted to sell the tech to the oil & gas industries. so many different kinds of death drives at play! (screenshot from: https://t.co/ckxsOHE5qY) https://t.co/3ybGgW4zdN pic.twitter.com/l64ZgnW63v
— molly smith (@pastachips) June 23, 2023
Updated
Suleman Dawood, the 19-year-old who was killed on the Titan was reportedly incredibly scared to take the deep sea trip and “wasn’t very up for it”, Azmeh Dawood, the teen’s fraternal aunt told NBC News. But he took the expedition – which was during Father’s Day weekend – to please his father.
“I feel disbelief. It’s an unreal situation … I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to,” Dawood told NBC.
Read the rest of Azmeh Dawood’s interview here.
Updated
Greetings, I’m Abené Clayton taking over the Guardian’s submersible tragedy blog from the west coast. Stay tuned here as more information on what went wrong emerges.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
A day after revelations that the Titan submersible imploded, officials are searching the ocean floor for evidence and determining who will be responsible for investigating the international disaster. The US Coast Guard said a formal inquiry has not yet been launched because maritime agencies are still busy searching the area where the vessel fell apart.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has announced that it is launching an investigation into the loss of the Titan sub. A team of investigators is now travelling to St John’s, Newfoundland, to “gather information, conduct interviews, and assess the occurrence”, it said.
A new mission to the submersible debris field near the wreckage of the Titanic is under way, according to the company behind the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that first discovered the debris site.
UK and US officials picked up a “large acoustic signal” indicating an implosion of the Titan sub days ago, but did not release the information to the public or some members of the rescue teams because it was classified, according to a UK naval source.
The search for the missing Titan submersible is expected to cost the US Coast Guard millions of dollars. OceanGate, the company that built and ran the vessel, will probably not be required to reimburse the US government for the search operation.
OceanGate, the company behind the Titan submersible, exaggerated details of the industry partnerships behind the development and engineering of its sub. Boeing and the University of Washington have denied the company’s claim that they helped design the sub.
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate who was killed onboard the Titan submersible, repeatedly dismissed warnings over the safety of the sub, emails between Rush and a deep sea exploration expert show.
Titanic film director and deep-sea exploration veteran James Cameron has said the Titan submersible tragedy was “only a matter of time” after Oceangate was warned the sub could “lead to literally catastrophic failure”.
An American investor has said he was offered cut-price tickets on the Titan’s doomed trip to the Titanic wreck and was told by OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush, that the journey would be “safer than crossing the street”.
Updated
UK and US officials picked up a “large acoustic signal” indicating an implosion of the Titan sub days ago, but did not release the information to the public or some members of the rescue teams because it was classified, according to a report.
The implosion was picked up by a “classified military device” in the North Atlantic and assessed by officials from the UK and US shortly after communication was lost with the Titan vessel, a UK naval source told the i.
The source said:
Whilst it would appear that classified systems may have heard noises detailing an implosion… as with all searches, you have to remain optimistic until you can categorically declare to the contrary.
The UK’s foreign office had been in regular contact with the victims’ families, who “might have been told different” to what was made public, the source said.
The search for the missing Titan submersible is expected to cost the US Coast Guard millions of dollars.
OceanGate, the company that built and ran the vessel, will probably not be required to reimburse the US government for search operation.
Paul Zukunft, a former US Coast Guard commander, told the Washington Post:
It’s no different than if a private citizen goes out and his boat sinks. We go out and recover him. We don’t stick them with the bill after the fact.
Canada launches investigation into Titan tragedy
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has announced that it is launching an investigation into the loss of the Titan sub.
A team of investigators is now travelling to St John’s, Newfoundland, to “gather information, conduct interviews, and assess the occurrence”, it said.
In a statement, the board said it was launching “a safety investigation regarding the circumstances of this operation” because the Titan’s surface support vessel, the Polar Prince, was a Canadian-flagged ship.
In accordance with the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act and international agreements, the TSB, as the investigation authority of the flag state of the support vessel involved in the occurrence, will conduct a safety investigation regarding the circumstances of this operation conducted by the Canadian-flagged vessel Polar Prince.
TSB launches investigation into a marine occurrence involving the Canadian-registered vessel Polar Prince and the submersible Titan #TSBMarine https://t.co/uVjKM9eJA7
— TSB of Canada (@TSBCanada) June 23, 2023
Updated
A day after revelations that the Titan submersible imploded, officials are searching the ocean floor for evidence and determining who will be responsible for investigating the international disaster.
The US Coast Guard said on Friday that a formal inquiry has not yet been launched because maritime agencies are still busy searching the area where the vessel fell apart.
Debris was located about 12,500 feet (3,810 meters) underwater in the North Atlantic, not far from the Titanic wreckage it was on its way to explore. The US Coast Guard led the initial search and rescue mission.
On Thursday, R Adm John Mauger said: “I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now.”
According to AP, it is unclear who would have the authority to lead what is sure to be a complex investigation involving several countries.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the US but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. OceanGate is based in Everett, Washington, but closed when the Titan was found.
Meanwhile, the Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada, and the people on board the submersible were from England, Pakistan, France, and the U.S.
New mission to debris site underway, says ROV company
A new mission to the submersible debris field near the wreckage of the Titanic is under way, according to the company behind the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that first discovered the debris site.
A spokesperson for Pelagic Research Services told CNN that the mission of the Odysseus 6 ROV is to continue searching and mapping out the debris sites.
The ROV’s mission – its second since discovering the debris site yesterday – began earlier today and will take about an hour to reach the location of the debris field, CNN reported.
The spokesperson, Jeff Mahoney, added that any attempts to recover anything from the site would be a larger operation, because the debris will likely be too heavy for the ROV to lift by itself.
The company expects to be on site conducting ROV missions for another week, he said.
A former employee of OceanGate who said he was fired after he raised safety concerns about the Titan vessel said he was “profoundly saddened to learn of the loss of the Titan and its crew”.
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, questioned the ability of the sub’s hull design to withstand such depths in a 2018 lawsuit.
In a statement to the BBC, Lochridge declined to comment on OceanGate or the 2018 lawsuit, but said:
My deepest condolences go out to the families of those who perished in this tragedy. I cannot imagine your pain at this time.
I also extend my gratitude to the rescue services, military personnel, and everyone else involved who worked relentlessly under challenging conditions to bring the Titan crew home.
Their tireless efforts underscore the critical network in place to support our subsea community.
US transport safety watchdog to try to find potential cause of sub implosion
The US Coast Guard has asked the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to assist in the investigation into the Titan’s implosion, NBC News is reporting, citing a source.
The NTSB’s office of Marine Safety, in conjunction with the Coast Guard, will attempt to find the potential cause of the deep-sea catastrophe, the source said.
Updated
OceanGate, the company behind the Titan submersible, exaggerated details of the industry partnerships behind the development and engineering of its sub.
On its website, the company said its “state-of-the-art vessel” was “designed and engineered by OceanGate Inc. in collaboration experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington”.
But Boeing and the University of Washington have denied OceanGate’s claim that they helped design the sub. A Boeing spokesperson told ABC News:
Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it.
The University of Washington also released a statement saying that it was not involved in creating OceanGate’s Titan submersible.
Nasa has confirmed it “consulted on materials and manufacturing processes for the submersible”. But a statement to Insider added:
NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate.
OceanGate CEO dismissed warnings about sub's safety as 'baseless cries' - report
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate who was killed on board the Titan submersible, repeatedly dismissed warnings over the safety of the sub, emails between Rush and a deep sea exploration expert show.
In messages seen by the BBC, Rush described criticism of Titan’s safety measures as “baseless lies” from “industry players” who were trying to stop “new entrants from entering their small existing market”.
The emails between Rush and Rob McCallum, a leading deep sea exploration specialist, ended after OceanGate’s lawyers threatened legal action, McCallum said. In one email in March 2018, McCallum writes to Rush:
I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic. In your race to [the] Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable’.
He told the BBC that he repeatedly urged OceanGate to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was not registered with international agencies, nor was it classified by a maritime industry group that sets basic engineering standards.
McCallum was among more than three dozen industry leaders in the submersible vessel field who signed a 2018 letter warning Rush of possible “catastrophic” problems with Titan’s development.
In one email, McCallum writes to Rush:
I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative.
But Rush expressed frustration, writing in one email:
We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult.
The OceanGate co-founder defended his company’s '“engineering focused, innovative approach” which “flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy”, and said he himself was “well qualified to understand the risks and issues associated with subsea exploration in a new vehicle”.
Updated
The cousin of Hamish Harding has said the British billionaire was a “great adventurer” who “died doing something that he loved".
In an interview with Sky News, Harding’s cousin Kathleen said she wasn’t surprised that he wanted to visit the Titanic wreck.
There he is down by the Titanic, which is, I suppose, one of the most famous ships in the world. It was a great adventure.
Hopefully he might have completed, well yes he did complete what he did, if you think about it. This was just a sad disaster, perhaps waiting to happen.
"He was a great adventurer."
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 23, 2023
Kathleen, a cousin of billionaire Hamish Harding who was on the Titan submersible when it went missing, tells Sky News he died doing something he loved.
Latest: https://t.co/8WJrYGdVXl pic.twitter.com/OpcWJ6sBn8
An implosion of a submersible would have been “like crushing a can of Coca-Cola”, a former US Coast Guard Reserve commander has said.
NBC News reports Armin Cate, who is also a retired senior special agent with the US department of homeland security, as saying:
From my understanding, the submersible imploded. In other words, the force of the water was so strong that it blew the back and the front of the submersible off.
When you crush that tube in the middle it’s like crushing a can of Coca-Cola you might say.
A scientist who had a near-death experience when his submersible got caught in the wreckage of the Titanic has said he believes ocean tourism needs to be paused.
Dr Michael Guillen was the first TV correspondent to report from the Titanic wreck site in 2000, when the sub he was in got caught up in a “very strong underwater current” and became lodged in the Titanic ship’s massive propeller.
TITANIC ACCIDENT. When I was at ABC News, I became the first TV correspondent in history to report from the wreck of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, 2-1/2 miles below the surface. An accident happened that almost claimed my life. Here's what happened. #Titanic… pic.twitter.com/b4t3WtaRdc
— Dr. Michael Guillen (@DrMGuillen) June 19, 2023
Guillen, speaking to CNN today, said:
The sea is dangerous. This is not a playground. The ocean is restless and I think of it when I was looking at the North Atlantic waters. They’re dark, they’re cold; they just want to swallow you up if you make the tiniest little mistake.
Updated
Will there be a formal investigation?
Investigation of the wreckage will certainly follow – starting with the salvage operation. R Adm John Mauger of the US First Coast Guard District said investigators would first attempt to find out why the vessel imploded.
“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now,” Mauger said, adding it was a “complex case” that happened in a remote part of the ocean and involved people from several different countries.
Ryan Ramsey, a former submarine captain in Britain’s Royal Navy, told the BBC the investigation would not be dissimilar to that into an airplane crash, aside from the absence of a flight recorder. The broadcaster also reported that there is little precedent for this type of investigation, so it is unclear who will do what.
Why was the implosion not announced sooner?
The US Navy detected sounds “consistent with an implosion” shortly after OceanGate’s Titan submersible lost contact on Sunday, according to a navy official.
Yet it was decided to continue the search and rescue operation to “make every effort to save the lives on board”, the US navy said.
The key to the decision-making is probably in the details. First, the rescue operation: analysts could not be 100% sure that what they detected was Titan’s implosion. If there was a chance lives could be saved, it was important to try everything possible.
Second, the delay in revealing the information. The US navy, according to the WSJ, wanted to keep its sub-detection capabilities secret. This possibly explains why nothing was initially said publicly – and why there were few details about exactly what was detected and how.
How was the sub allowed to operate if it hadn’t been certified?
According to experts, Titan’s operators got around what regulations there are partly by operating in international waters.
The vessel was not registered with international agencies, nor was it classified by a maritime industry group that sets basic engineering standards. Its operators OceanGate have said this is because they believed Titan’s design was so innovative it would take years for inspectors to understand it.
Bart Kemper, a forensic engineer who works on submarine designs – and who signed a 2018 letter imploring OceanGate to operate within established norms, said it avoided having to abide by US regulations by deploying in international waters – beyond the reach of national agencies such as the US Coast Guard.
Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor who focuses on maritime history and policy, said companies running deepwater operations are perhaps underscrutinised because of where they operate.
Regulations on deep sea submersibles are “sparse”, but the OceanGate submersible was not for “joyrides”, one of the company’s founders, Guillermo Söhnlein, has said.
An American investor has said he was offered cut-price tickets on the Titan’s doomed trip to the Titanic wreck and was told the journey would be “safer than crossing the street”.
Jay Bloom shared a Facebook post with screenshots purportedly showing text messages between himself and Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate who was killed on the sub.
Bloom said he and his son were offered a “last minute price” of $150,000 a head, a discount on the usual $250,000 fee, but turned them down due to “scheduling” issues. Instead, the seats went to Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, Bloom said.
The screenshots appear to show Bloom saying that his son’s friend had “researched what could go wrng and put a little scare in him”. In response, Rush appeared to suggest holding a video call with his son. He added:
Curious what the uninformed would say the danger is and whether it’s real or imagined.
In the Facebook post, Bloom writes:
I expressed safety concerns and Stockton told me: ‘While there’s obviously risk – it’s way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving’.
He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street. I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong.
The families of the passengers who died on board the Titan submersible could still sue the vessel’s owner despite liability waivers signed by the five men, according to legal experts.
The victims, who paid as much as $250,000 (£196,750) each for the journey to 12,500 feet (3,810 metres) below the surface, are believed to have signed liability waivers.
According to a CBS correspondent who made the Titan journey last year, the waiver he signed mentioned the possibility of death three times on the first page alone.
But liability waivers signed by Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, may not shield OceanGate from potential lawsuits by the victims’ families, Reuters reports.
Maritime law expert Matthew D Shaffe told the news agency:
If there were aspects of the design or construction of this vessel that were kept from the passengers or it was knowingly operated despite information that it was not suitable for this dive, that would absolutely go against the validity of the waiver.
The degree of any potential negligence will depend on the causes of the disaster, which are still under investigation. OceanGate could claim it had no knowledge of the sub’s potential defects, but legal experts said it would be a difficult burden of proof to meet.
It is not known if any of the families will sue.
William Kohnen, chairman of the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee, has described the Titan sub tragedy as “clearly preventable” and said the loopholes OceanGate exploited weren’t “very wise”.
Kohnen, in an interview with the BBC, said a tourism submersible such as the Titan would not be allowed in US waters.
The Coast Guard would not allow it. It would not be allowed to work in British coastal waters, because it would have required it to be certified. The same thing in Canada.
It turns out that they operated in international waters, where no Coast Guard has jurisdiction.
The family of British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, have said the two died “hand in hand” in the catastrophic implosion of the Titan sub.
The relationship between father and son was “a joy to behold”, according to an obituary from the family, shared by the British Asian Trust. It said:
With profound sorrow, we mourn the tragic loss of Shahzada and his beloved son, Suleman, who had embarked on a journey to visit the remnants of the legendary Titanic in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
In this unfathomable tragedy, we try to find solace in the enduring legacy of humility and humanity that they have left behind and find comfort in the belief that they passed on to the next leg of their spiritual journey hand-in-hand, father and son.
The pair were “each other’s greatest supporters and cherished a shared passion for adventure and exploration of all the world had to offer them”, it continued.
Sub's catastrophic failure 'only a matter of time', says James Cameron
“Titanic” film director and deep-sea exploration veteran James Cameron has said the Titan submersible tragedy was “only a matter of time” after Oceangate, the company that operated the sub, was warned the sub could “lead to literally catastrophic failure”.
Cameron, in an interview with Good Morning America, compared the Titan sub incident to the sinking of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. He said:
The Titanic fascinates us because it seems like such a colossal failure of some kind of system back then, and 1,500 people paid the price for it… The Titanic captain was handed multiple warnings of ice ahead. He steamed full ahead into an unknown ice field on a pitch dark night with no moon. If that isn’t a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is and they paid the price.
Here you have the people that were designing and operating the sub who were warned both internally –apparently there was an engineer that walked off the project because he didn’t believe in it – and a number of people in the … deep submergence engineering community, including people that I’m very close with, warn the company that this could lead to literally the term was catastrophic failure. And that’s exactly what happened.
A 2018 letter, published in the New York Times earlier this week, showed industry leaders in the submersible vessel field had warned Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, of possible “catastrophic” problems with Titan’s development.
The Marine Technology Society, an industry group made up of ocean engineers, technologists, policymakers and educators, expressed “concern regarding the development of Titan and the planned Titanic expeditions” and warned against the “current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate”.
Cameron said it was “insidious” that the way composite carbon fibre materials “fail over time”.
Each dive adds more and more microscopic damage. So yes, they operated the sub safely at Titanic last year and the year before, but it was only a matter of time before it caught up.
"Titanic fascinates us because it seems like such a colossal failure ... The warnings were not heeded … A number of people in the greater deep submergence engineering community warned [OceanGate] that this could lead to literally the term was catastrophic failure." — @jimcameron pic.twitter.com/gQXjcoSQth
— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 23, 2023
The “Titanic” film director and deep-sea exploration veteran James Cameron has said there were three possible areas of structural failure on the Titan sub that may have led to its implosion.
Cameron, in an interview with Good Morning America, said that “the weakest link if I had to put money down” was the sub’s composite cylinder, or the main hall that the crew were inside. He said:
There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the seafloor, but that carbon fibre composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces and it’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. So it’s pretty clear that that’s what failed.
The question is, was it the primary failure or a secondary failure from something else happening?
He went on to say that the creators of the sub were “trying to apply aviation thinking to a deep submergence engineering problem”, “because you don’t use composite for vessels that are seeing external pressure”.
“This was trying to apply aviation thinking to a deep submergence engineering problem. … We all said that it was a flawed idea and they didn't go through certification … I think that was a critical failure.” — @JimCameron on the OceanGate Titan sub. https://t.co/JwmqURNCDj pic.twitter.com/o3zmdSk6Cx
— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 23, 2023
Ending human trips to Titanic should be seriously considered - heritage society
The president of the Titanic International Society has said it is time to consider ending trips to the wreck of the Titanic in the wake of the Titan disaster.
The Titanic International Society is an American non-profit organisation founded in 1989 to preserve the history of the Titanic.
In a lengthy statement, its president Charles Haas has called into question the need for “human trips” and called for an “extensive, detailed investigation” into the sinking of the Titan submersible, which he added was “avoidable”. He said:
It is time to consider seriously whether human trips to Titanic’s wreck should end in the name of safety, with relatively little remaining to be learned from or about the wreck. Crewed submersibles’ roles in surveying the wreck now can be assigned to autonomous underwater vehicles, like those that mapped the ship and its debris field in high-resolution, 3-D detail last summer.
Haas said the Titanic has claimed “five additional victims 111 years after her loss”.
He lamented the death of French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, saying his “irreplaceable knowledge” and “more than a quarter-century of expertise” was lost.
Calling for an investigation, he said:
We believe that an extensive, detailed investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Transportation Safety Board and/or their Canadian counterparts clearly is warranted.
It should deeply inquire into the submersible’s design, structure, communication and safety systems, owners’ policies and emergency preparations and procedures, and the proximity, state of readiness and deployment of deep-sea rescue systems to the site.
We ask our members and those who feel similarly to contact their members of Congress, Parliament or other legislative body, to ensure that this inquiry is initiated.
Additionally, intensive pre-service inspection of deep-sea submersibles should be required by international regulation. Just as Titanic taught the world safety lessons, so, too, should Titan’s loss.
Haas said the Titanic taught the world about “the dangers of hubris and over-reliance on technology”, adding “this expedition’s tragic ending has shown that these lessons remain to be learned”.
Downing Street has said that Rishi Sunak’s thoughts are with the loved ones of the victims of the missing Titan submersible, which is believed to have imploded while attempting to visit the Titanic wreckage.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said:
His thoughts are very much with the loved ones of those who have died in this tragic incident and they have been through an unimaginably difficult ordeal in the last few days.
FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) are in touch with those families to provide support.
The University of Strathclyde has paid tribute to student Suleman Dawood, who died on board the Titan submersible.
The university said:
The staff and students of Strathclyde have been shocked and profoundly saddened by the death of Suleman Dawood and his father in this tragic incident.
The entire university community offers our deepest condolences to the Dawood family and all of those affected by this terrible accident.
Our student wellbeing team is on hand to offer appropriate support to Suleman’s Strathclyde classmates and the wider community at this difficult time.
Kohnen, said the implosion of the Titan submersible was probably caused by “instability”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Kohnen said:
Clearly, something disturbed the pressure hull.
If you’ve ever held a balloon and it just pops, if you just hold it lightly … something happened.
An implosion is just a reverse explosion, so it exploded inwards.
Earlier in the programme, Guillermo Sohnlein, cofounder of OceanGate Expeditions, was asked about the potential cause of the implosion.
He said: “Anyone who operates in that depth of the ocean, whether it is human-rated submersibles or robotic submersibles, knows the risks of operating under such pressure and that at any given moment, on any mission, with any vessel, you run the risk of this kind of implosion.”
Updated
William Kohnen, chairman of the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee, said the regulations for building submersible vessels were “written in blood”.
Kohnen’s organisation, based in Los Angeles in the US, raised safety concerns in 2018 about OceanGate’s development of Titan.
He suggested the company was “not willing to undergo the standard certification process which we all do in the submarine industry” via a third party “double check” system.
The committee warned at the time that the development decisions could have “negative outcomes from minor to catastrophic that could have serious consequences”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Kohnen said:
We’re only smart because we remember what we wrote and what we did wrong last time.
The rules are written in blood – it is in there because it caused trouble before, and to say: ‘Well I think we’re just going to ignore that and go on our own way,’ suggests there might be a bit of input of wisdom that this might not be the best decision.
It comes after Guillermo Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, told the same programme that the Titan had undergone 14 years of “rigorous” and “robust” checks during development.
Guillermo Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, the parent company of the Titan submersible, explained it was “tricky to navigate” the current regulations on submersibles.
He told Times Radio:
It’s too early to tell, there’s data that’s going to have to be collected over the coming days, weeks and months, and I’m sure the team will work with whoever is conducting the investigations to cooperate and provide as much information as possible.
At that point, we’ll be in a better position to tell (what went wrong).
When asked about the regulations surrounding submersibles, he said:
There are regulations in place but as you can imagine there aren’t many subs that go that deep, so the regulations are pretty sparse and many of them are antiquated and designed for specific instances.
It’s tricky to navigate those regulatory schemes.
Updated
Royal Navy submarine captain says there are questions about submersible safety process
When asked about the safety of the Titan submersible, former Royal Navy submarine captain Ryan Ramsey explained that lessons needed to be learned and questions need to be answered.
That’s the question that needs to be answered. Most submersibles and all submarines go through a stringent safety process.
Every time they come back in and every time before they go to sea they do safety checks, check the safety of the hull, state of the hull openings, everything.
What’s apparent here is they didn’t have to follow the same regulation, and therefore didn’t follow the same regulation. I think that will be where a big focus is.
That doesn’t mean blame, that’s not what we should be doing, what we should be doing is what’s called adjust culture, where we work out lessons learned and implement them going forward.
Updated
Former Royal Navy submarine captain Ryan Ramsey said he thinks the five people onboard the submersible will have put the possible outcome of implosion to the back of their minds after the vessel had been on a number of trips to the Titanic wreckage already. He said:
I don’t think they will have gone down there thinking it was a possible outcome.
The submariners, for example, we all consider that and then you put it aside because you’re professional submariners and you go and do it, but you always know that it’s a possibility that something goes wrong.
You all go down together, do your work, and come back, or you don’t come back at all. Everybody knows that and that’s what they do when they join.
I doubt very much that any of them expected this outcome and I suspect they would have considered briefly but put it to the back of their minds because three trips had already been done down to the Titanic by that submersible.
Former Royal Navy submarine captain Ryan Ramsey has explained the possible reasons for the Titan submersible to implode on its descent to the Titanic wreckage. He told PA news agency:
There were probably two outcomes for this which is one, it’s lost communications and gone down to the bottom, and it’s stuck on the bottom.
The other one is that it lost communications and then suffered a catastrophic failure and imploded, which is what looks to be what happened.
“Either one of two things has happened. Either the hatch with the 17 bolts they used to seal them in has had a failure, which has then caused the hull to collapse at pressure because there’s huge amounts of pressure, even halfway down, or the pressure hull itself had a defect in it when they sailed and that’s fractured from the pressure, and caused the same result.
The only positive out of it is that it was instantaneous and they didn’t know anything.
Tributes pour in for people killed on Titan submersible
Tributes have poured in for the five people who are now believed to have been instantly killed in a “catastrophic implosion” of the Titan submersible during its dive to the Titanic.
On Thursday, after days of aerial and underwater searches, a robotic diving vehicle deployed from a Canadian ship discovered a debris field from the submersible Titan on the seabed 1,600 feet (488 metres) from the bow of the Titanic.
Five major fragments of the 22-foot (6.7-metre) Titan were located in the debris field left from its disintegration, including the vessel’s tail cone and two sections of the pressure hull, Coast Guard officials said.
“The debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle,” Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US coast guard said.
The Titan, operated by the US-based company OceanGate Expeditions, had been missing since it lost contact with its surface support ship on Sunday morning about an hour and 45 minutes into what should have been a two-hour dive to the world’s most famous shipwreck.
The White House said the loved ones of the five men had endured a “harrowing ordeal” over the past week.
For more on the reactions to this grim tragedy, read the full report by Guardian International’s site editor Graham Russell.
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George Rutherglen, a professor of admiralty law at the University of Virginia said he would be surprised if the US government did not respond to the incident with more regulation, particularly given the resources deployed by the US Coast Guard.
These wrecks at the bottom of the sea have become more accessible with advancing technology. It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily become safer to go down and take a look.
The International Maritime Organization, which regulates commercial shipping, could take some kind of action, he added, and Congress also could pass legislation. Nations such as the U.S. could, for example, block ships engaging in such expeditions from docking in their ports.
I would just be surprised if any incident with all of these costs involved — wrongful death, expensive rescue — would not lead to some initiatives.
But Forrest Booth, a San Francisco-based partner at Kennedys Law, said the International Maritime Organization “has no authority to impose its will” and was sceptical about how much change will follow.
There could be a move for states to adopt an international treaty on the deep ocean. But that will be resisted by some nations that want to do deep-sea mining, etc. I do not think much of substance will happen after the media attention of this event dies down.
- AP
Mike Reiss, a writer for “The Simpsons” television show who went on a Titanic expedition with OceanGate in 2022 has recalled how his waiver said he would be “subject to extreme pressure. And any failure of the vessel could cause severe injury or death.”
Speaking by memory Reiss recalled the terms said:
I will be exposed to risks associated with high pressure gases, pure oxygen, high voltage systems which could lead to injury, disability and death. If I am injured, I may not receive immediate medical attention.
The comments come amid speculation of the legal fall out from the incident and calls for more regulation of the industry.
- AP
The loss of the Titan submersible has raised questions about the regulation of deep-sea exploration.
Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy compared deep-water operations as “akin to where aviation was in the early 20th century.”
Aviation was in its infancy — and it took accidents for decisions to be made to be put into laws.
There’ll be a time when you won’t think twice about getting on a submersible and going down 13,000 feet. But we’re not there yet.
Mercogliano said such operations are scrutinized less than the companies that launch people into space. In the Titan’s case, that’s in part because it operated in international waters, far from the reach of many laws of the United States or other nations.
The Titan wasn’t registered as a U.S. vessel or with international agencies that regulate safety, Mercogliano added. Nor was it classified by a maritime industry group that sets standards on matters such as hull construction.
Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO who died on Titan, previously said he thought regulation worked to impede innovation writing in a blog post on his company’s website that:.
Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.
- AP
Opening Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the fate of the Titan submersible vessel that went missing during a dive down to the Titanic with five people onboard.
On Thursday the US Coast Guard confirmed the Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion”, killing all onboard, and there are multiple reports that the US Navy picked up an underwater “anomaly” on its sensors that was probably the sound of that implosion, before any search equipment had been deployed. The navy passed that information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the navy did not consider the data to be definitive.
Filmmaker and deep-sea exploration veteran James Cameron said his sources reported similar information on Monday.
“We got confirmation within an hour that there had been a loud bang at the same time that the sub comms were lost. A loud bang on the hydrophone. Loss of transponder. Loss of comms. I knew what happened. The sub imploded,” Cameron told Reuters.
He said that he told colleagues in an email on Monday, “We’ve lost some friends,” and, “It’s on the bottom in pieces right now.”
Meanwhile, tributes have been paid to those aboard the submersible: British adventurer Hamish Harding, 58; French veteran Titanic explorer Paul Henri Nargeoloet, 77; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman; and 61-year-old American Stockton Rush, co-founder of OceanGate, the company that operated the lost sub.
The White House said the loved ones of the five men had endured a “harrowing ordeal” over the past week.
“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan,” it said in a statement. “They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.”
The family of Harding remembered a “dedicated father” who was “a guide, an inspiration, a support and a living legend” following the news of his death.
The friends and family of those killed also thanked those engaged in the search and paid respect to their loved ones. The families of the Dawoods said they were overwhelmed by the support they have received; Nargeoloet’s son remembered him as a larger than life figure and an aviation company operated by Harding’s family described him as a “larger than life figure”.
Officials have not confirmed whether they will be able to recover the bodies of the crew members but the Coast Guard is keeping some vessels in place to gather evidence while other personnel will be demobilised over the next 24 hours.
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