Debris from the lost submersible Titan has been returned to land after a fatal implosion on a voyage to the wreck of the Titanic earlier this month, with the loss of all five aboard, deep in the north Atlantic.
Pieces of the mangled craft were brought ashore in Newfoundland, Canada, on Wednesday morning, in hopes of assisting an investigation into the tragedy and answering questions about the craft’s experimental design, safety standards and lack of certification.
An international group of agencies is investigating what may have caused the Titan submersible to implode while carrying five people to the Titanic wreckage, and U.S. maritime officials say they’ll issue a report aimed at improving the safety of submersibles worldwide.
Investigators from the U.S., Canada, France and the United Kingdom are working closely together on the probe of the June 18 accident, which happened in an “unforgiving and difficult-to-access region” of the North Atlantic, said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the Coast Guard First District.
The US Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the undersea implosion of the Titan submersible and has not ruled out finding human remains – while also hinting that the probe could lead to criminal charges.
Captain Jason Neubauer, who is chairing the US Coast Guard investigation into the implosion of the vessel, made the comments as the search and rescue aspects of the response came to an end.
British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were killed on board the submersible, alongside the American chief executive of the company responsible for the vessel, Stockton Rush, and French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Officials investigating the doomed Titanic submersible will examine voice recordings and other data from its mothership to try to determine what happened and whether any criminality occurred, according to reports.
While the world was praying this week for a dramatic rescue of the Titan submariners, those with access to classified intelligence knew all along that the search was almost certainly futile.
A US Navy listening device had picked up the noise of what has now been described as the “catastrophic implosion” of the vessel at the time it lost contact with its mothership on Sunday.
The founder of OceanGate dismissed warnings that he was risking passengers’ lives on his dives as “baseless cries”, newly unearthed emails show.
Leading submersible operators had warned Stockton Rush about the risks involved, with one telling him he was placing people on board in a “dangerous dynamic” through his refusal to adhere to industry standards.
But Rush said the fears were alarmist. “We’ve heard the baseless cries of ‘you’re going to kill someone’ way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult,” he emailed Rob McCallum, founder of EYOS Expeditions.
Warnings over the safety of OceanGate’s Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show.
In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body.
Mr Rush responded that he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.
Bone-chilling TikTok clips show what the “catastrophic implosion” of the Titan submersible might have looked like — a terrifying re-enactment of a scenario that killed five passengers in the North Atlantic’s treacherous depths.
Implosions happen shockingly fast, as demonstrated by an old animation of a railroad tanker suddenly collapsing. TikTok animators extrapolated what that might have looked like underwater.
🚨 Breaking News
All five people onboard on #Submersible are all very sadly died, #OceanGate confirms. This video shows how the accident happened with the submarine. 💔#Titanic #Titan pic.twitter.com/W82X9OawuD— WOLF™️ (@thepakwolf) June 22, 2023
The US Navy detected sounds “consistent with an implosion” shortly after OceanGate’s Titan submersible lost contact, a navy official has said.
Five people were aboard the vessel when it went missing during a dive to the Titanic wreck on Sunday.
The loss of the sub was confirmed on Thursday after a huge search mission.
The official told CBS News their information about the “acoustic anomaly” had been used by the US Coast Guard to narrow the search area.
🚨 #BREAKING: A top secret US Navy acoustic detection system first picked up on the Titan submersible implosion just HOURS after the sub began its mission on Sunday, officials involved told WSJ.
Almost immediately after the sub lost communication with its mothership, the Navy… pic.twitter.com/NRU1E97NxF
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) June 22, 2023
h/t XC
The debris discovered by a remotely operated vehicle searching the site of the Titanic’s wreckage for the lost OceanGate submersible was confirmed to be that of the missing vessel.
US Coast Guard officials said five major pieces of debris were found 1,600 feet from the shipwreck, with the debris being “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” belonging to the Titan sub.
Authorities said Titan imploded under the pressure of the Atlantic, killing all five passengers aboard.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that an underwater vessel has located a debris field near the Titanic in the search for a missing submersible with five people aboard, a potential breakthrough in an increasingly urgent around-the-clock effort.
The Coast Guard’s post on Twitter gave no details, such as whether officials believe the debris is connected to the Titan, which was on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The search passed the critical 96-hour mark Thursday when breathable air could have run out.
A massive effort to find a submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic has entered a critical stage. The vessel went missing deep under the ocean on Sunday with five people on board.
Researchers aboard the Polar Prince – its mothership on the surface – lost contact with the crew shortly after the Titan began its dive. There is limited oxygen on board, and it was estimated that supplies would run out by around 10:00 GMT (06:00 EDT) on Thursday.
Undersea noises have been detected in the search area, but it is not known where they are coming from or what they mean.
Missing Titanic submersible: Why oxygen timeline on sub may not be so fixed
The exact whereabouts of the Titanic submersible and the condition of the five crew onboard are unknown. It is thought that, if the vessel is still intact, it may have just a few hours of oxygen remaining, creating a race against time to find the sub before it is too late.
However, that timeline is not necessarily rigid. Dr Ken LeDez, a hyperbaric medicine expert at Memorial University in St John’s, Newfoundland, has told BBC News that, depending on conditions, some of those aboard could survive longer than expected.
We’re told we should listen to the science, but the science on forest fires is that they peaked in the 1980s
Until the recent Canadian wildfires sent plumes of smoke over the densely populated cities around the Great Lakes and along the Eastern Seaboard, few people in those cities had ever experienced the weird orange haze of a forest fire or the temporary spike in fine particulates and pervasive smell of smoke. Understandably, many people reacted with alarm. We city-dwellers typically only see wildfires on television, usually alongside footage of fire crews and water-bombers valiantly trying to put them out, which creates the impression they are somehow unnatural events that must be avoided at all costs. In reality, forest fires are not only natural but essential to the life cycle of the forest ecosystem.
Are we done with the Canadian wildfire smoke crisis? Here in Toronto, the post-wildfire week began with a cold snap and what seemed like record-breaking rainfall that caused traffic accidents and kept people off the streets. Missing were CBC and other media reports, along with political and environmental group statements, that this local weather event is hurting the economy and creating risks that are typical of what we can expect from the ravages of fossil-fuel-driven climate change.
Steve Pynes is a rarity—he’s the only historian he knows of that is dedicated specifically to the study of fires. And that gives him a unique perspective on Canada’s current wildfires.
“Canada has had fires at both ends burning at the same time—the 1908 fires were just a kind of rolling thunder from Vancouver all the way to Maine. So what we’re seeing is not unprecedented,” Pyne told The Epoch Times.
