Titan sub implosion to be probed by an international group of agencies

A veteran explorer and host of Expedition Unknown on Discovery Plus said he decided to pass on a chance to film on OceanGate’s Titan submersible over safety concerns.

Josh Gates tweeted on Wednesday that he had decided to walk away from an opportunity to film Titanic because the submersible “did not perform well” during a test dive.

In a series of tweets, Gates explained that he had the opportunity to join OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush on a test dive while the company was preparing for its initial visit to the Titanic, which occurred in July 2021.

He wrote: “To those asking, #Titan did not perform well on my dive. Ultimately, I walked away from a huge opportunity to film Titanic due to my safety concerns w/ the @OceanGate platform. There’s more to the history and design of Titan that has not been made public – much of it concerning.”

Maroosha Muzaffar reports:

An implosion that killed five crew onboard the Titan submersible is now the focus of investigations by agencies from four countries.

Secret US Navy listening devices detected an “anomaly” near the Titanic shipwreck soon after the Titan departed from its support ship the Polar Prince, which is believed to be the moment sub suffered a “catastrophic implosion” of its carbon fibre hull.

On Tuesday 20 June, buoys detected “tapping sounds” coming from the search area, raising slim hopes that survivors could yet be found.The sound was detected at 2am local time by a Canadian P-3 aircraft.

It first came every 30 minutes and was heard again four hours later, the internal government memo obtained by CNN states.

Before they boarded the submersible that imploded near the Titanic wreck, the passengers who died this week were most likely asked signed liability waivers.

One of the waivers, signed by a person who planned to go on an OceanGate expedition, required passengers to acknowledge risks involved with the trip on the Titan vessel and any support vessels. The waiver, which was reviewed by The Associated Press, said that passengers could experience “severe injury, disability, disability, emotional trauma, other harm, and/or death” while on board the Titan, according to the waiver.

Matthew Shaffer, a trial lawyer with the maritime personal injury law firm Schechter, Shaffer& Harris, said the forms are commonplace before doing any kind of “ultra-hazardous recreational activity.”

“A good release will cover any and all potential harm and you are going to spell it out in simple language as possible,” he said. “You can get killed. You can get hurt. You can get maimed and you are not going to have any recourse. You’re releasing us of any liability for anything bad that is going to happen to you as a result of you engaging in this activity.”

Regardless of whether or not there was a waiver, Shaffer and others have said they expect families of those who died on the submersible to sue not only OceanGate, which operated the Titan, but also the maker of the vessel and companies that provided parts.

“The waiver is certainly going to be a significant factor stemming from this disaster and it depends a lot on the court and the facts that come out,” he said.

A friend of billionaire Hamish Harding, one of the victims of the Titan submersible tragedy, has opened up about her desperate efforts to get a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed for the search.

Tracy Ryan, co-founder of NKore Biotherapeutics, said she was shocked to learn that the British explorer was on the craft. “When I heard it was Hamish, my heart dropped to my stomach,” Ms Ryan told People Magazine.

She said her priority was deploying the Magellan, an ROV with a manipulator arm that could attach to a hull and possibly lift it off the ocean floor.

“I had been working behind the scenes for four days to get the Magellan sub there and get their permits approved because they did have the capabilities to dive all the way down to the site,” She told the magazine.

“And I actually brought a United States congressman in to work with the air force, navy and coast guard trying to get them clearance.”

The search for the missing Titan submersible fully captured the world’s attention, from reports of mysterious “banging” noises to estimates of how much oxygen may have been left in the underwater vessel.

On 18 June, the OceanGate Expeditions submersible Titan was beginning its trip to visit the Titanic wreckage at a depth of 12,500ft.

About one hour and 45 minutes into its deep dive, the submersible lost communications with its surface ship, the Polar Prince, and was believed to have suffered a “catastrophic implosion”.

The search for the submersible captured the attention of millions, as phrases such as “Titan” and hashtags like #OceanGate dominated Twitter’s top trending and TikTok For You Pages.

According to Dr Justin D’Arienzo – a clinical psychologist in Jacksonville, Florida and former US Navy psychologist – the reason the public has been so invested is down to our desire to relate to others that sustains our obsession.

“We all can relate to that feeling of being trapped somewhere or being in the water or experiencing that level of uncertainty,” he tells The Independent.

“What makes it so relatable is that we all could imagine being helpless with other humans and not know what to do.”

Two memorials were held last week at Titanic museums across the US, in honour of the five people who died earlier this month on a submarine expedition to the famous shipwreck.

The services were held at Titanic museums in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri.

Both museums are owned by John Josyln, part of a team that explored the Titanic wreckage in a famous 1987 televised expedition.

The services featured wreaths and speeches in the rooms memorialising the more than 1,500 people who died in the 1912 disaster.

“Every day we pay tribute to the 2,208 passengers that were onboard the Titanic,” museum employee Jamie Terrell told KY3. “Their legacy will be their memory. We get to be the ambassadors for that and we take great honour in that. Today we’re adding five more names.”

Unsurprisingly, given the high volume of often-mocking commentary and memes about the failed expedition online, social media users lambasted the memorials as inappropriate.

Five people died while aboard the Titan submersible last week after the vessel imploded.

Stockton Rush – 61, chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, told Sky News earlier this year the Titanic was “an amazingly beautiful wreck”. Mr Rush began his career as a pilot at 19 after qualifying from the United Airlines Jet Training Institute. He was the youngest jet transport-rated pilot in the world.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet- 77, was director of underwater research at a company that owns the rights to the Titanic wreck and recovers artifacts. A former commander in the French navy, he was both a deep diver and a mine sweeper. After retiring from the navy, he led the first recovery expedition to the Titanic in 1987 and several more, becoming a leading authority on the wreck site.

Hamish Harding- 58, was the chairman of private plane firm Action Aviation. The father of two was a seasoned explorer and held three Guinness World Records, including the longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel. He dived to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench in March 2021.

Shahzada Dawood- 48, was vice-chairman of one of Pakistan’s largest conglomerates, Engro Corporation, with investments in fertilisers, vehicle manufacturing, energy and digital technologies.

Suleman Dawood- 19, Suleman was a fan of science fiction literature, according to a statement from the Dawood Group. He studied at the University of Strathclyde.

Voice recordings and other data will be reviewed as part of a US Coast Guard-appointed expert board’s probe into the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible last week.

American and Canadian marine authorities have announced investigations into the circumstances that led to the vessel’s malfunction after its chambers were found in a sea of debris 1,600ft from the wreck of the Titanic.

Everyone is exposed to atmospheric pressure, and this changes depending on how high up you are and whether you’re at ground level or underwater.

This pressure has been described by the American Museum of Natural History as a long column of air above your head that’s reaching to the top of the atmosphere and pressing down on you.

If you go higher, for example, if you climb a mountain, less of that column is pushing down on you, hence the air pressure is lower.

When you get to sea level, the pressure is described as one atmosphere, which is about equivalent to one kilogram of weight pushing down on every square centimetre.

Once you get under the sea, the column pressing down on you increases significantly because you also have to contend with water, which is far heavier than air. The pressure increases by one atmosphere for every 10 metres of ocean depth.

By the time it reached the Titanic wreckage, the Titan submersible would have been facing a pressure of between 375 and 400 atmospheres.

That’s equivalent to 4,000 tonnes pushing on an area of one square metre, according to associate professor Eric Fusil, director of the Shipbuilding Hub at Adelaide University.