‘Extremely bleak’ chance of recovering bodies from Titan due to ‘catastrophic explosion’
Experts say parts of the doomed submersible would have turned to “dust” due to the force of the “catastrophic implosion” of the Titan.
The bodies of the five people on the doomed Titan are unlikely to be recovered according to experts who predict they could have turned to “dust”.
It comes as a review of OceanGate, the company responsible for the sub, finds it was touting its safety in public statements, but privately rejecting basic standards.
The Titan was on an expedition to view the shipwreck of the Titanic when it lost contact with the outside world and disappeared in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Five people died in what appears to have been a “catastrophic implosion”, a US Coast Guard official said on Thursday.
Read on for the latest updates about the doomed vessel.
Chances of recovering bodies ‘extremely bleak’
The chances of recovering the bodies of the five passengers aboard the doomed OceanGate submersible bound for the Titanic wreckage are extremely bleak, experts have said.
It is unclear when the powerful underwater implosion occurred during the Titan’s journey to the wreckage 3.81km below the ocean’s surface — but due to the nature of the disaster, recovery efforts are extremely difficult.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Rear Adm. John Mauger of the US Coast Guard said.
“We’ll continue to work and search the area down there but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time,” he added of the bodies being recovered.
Ofer Ketter, a longtime submersible specialist and co-founder of private sub company Sub-Merge, told the New York Post that the force of the implosion, which means the vessel violently collapsed inward under the immense pressure of the sea, would have turned parts of the submersible “to dust”.
“To me, it makes absolute sense that the chamber, the pressure chamber where the passengers are sitting in, did not withstand the pressure because of the material that it was built on,” he said.
“And that is exactly what imploded and turned to dust. Everything else that was either made of titanium or perhaps other steels, survived, and that’s what was found.”
He added it would have happened in a millisecond, if not quicker, if something breached the hull of the vessel to cause a loss in pressure.
“They never knew it happened,” he said of the five victims. “Which is actually very positive in this very negative situation. It was instantaneous — before even their brain could even send a type of message to their body that they’re having pain.”
Titan submersible CEO proudly claims "You're remembered for the rules you break" pic.twitter.com/ASAT0XftFf
— Jeff 🌊 ☕ (@wellsy57) June 23, 2023
‘Macabre’ job ad emerges during desperate rescue
OceanGate listed a job posting for a submersible pilot on its website while the frantic search and rescue mission was underway for the Titan.
Social media was abuzz on Friday after screenshots of the ad, which was posted before the Coast Guard announced that all five people aboard the Titan had perished, were widely circulated.
OceanGate posted the ad in search of a Submersible Pilot/Marine Technician who would “help manage and operate our fleet of manned submersibles and support vessels”.
“We are looking for a committed and competent individual with combination of strong mechanical and interpersonal skills who can work on sensitive marine equipment, perform regular maintenance and operate complex systems to support dive operations,” the ad stated.
The ad has since gone viral, sparking a slew of twisted jokes on social media, with one user quipping, “I can’t work under that kind of pressure.”
Others also voiced their horror at the timing of the ad.
“That’s just macabre,” another Twitter user remarked.
Doomed sub’s ‘large red flags’ revealed
Glossy documents and videos featured scientists or explorers praising the company’s innovations.
One flashy promotional video, published last year, opens with a voiceover boasting an unforgettable — but safe — voyage: “OceanGate Expeditions offers you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a specially trained crew member safely diving to the Titanic wreckage site.”
That video also features explorer Paul Henri-Nargeolet, who was among those who died this week, praising the design of the doomed vessel.
“The sub, for me, it’s very well done because it’s simple,” Mr Nargeolet said.
“Usually they have a lot of equipment and a lot of switches, and on this one you don’t have because you work with a screen and a keyboard and it’s very easy to do that.”
The company boasted the Titan had an “unparalleled safety feature” that monitored the integrity of the vessel’s hull during each dive, according to OceanGate’s website. A 2021 press release highlighted its “multiple, redundant safety systems”.
“This was a company that was already defying much of what we already know about submersible design,” Rachel Lance, a Duke University biomedical engineer who has studied physiological requirements of survival underwater, told CNN.
She noted some of the vessel’s design materials “were already large red flags to people who have worked in this field”.
OceanGate declined to comment on its safety record.
Former employees voice concern
Two former OceanGate employees separately voiced safety concerns about the Titan.
David Lochridge, who worked as the director of marine operations between 2016 and 2018, claimed in court filings that he had expressed apprehension about the submersible’s design and the company’s testing of its hull before he was terminated.
Mr Lochridge also questioned OceanGate’s plans to install a monitoring system on the vessel to detect the start of hull breakdown.
His court filing argued “this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull.”
OceanGate terminated his employment and sued Lochridge in 2018, arguing he shared confidential information and used the company for immigration assistance then manufactured a reason to be fired. The company’s suit stated Lochridge is not an engineer but a submersible pilot and diver.
Another former employee who worked briefly for the company as an operations technician during the same time period as Lochridge also had concerns about the hull’s thickness and adhesion, he said, speaking to CNN on the condition of anonymity.
OceanGate overstated connections
OceanGate appears to have also overstated its relationships with two institutions widely respected for their innovation: Boeing and University of Washington.
OceanGate’s website touted a partnership with Boeing, stating that its Titan was “designed and engineered by OceanGate Inc. in collaboration [with] experts” from Boeing and other entities. Similarly, OceanGate claimed in a 2021 court filing that the Titan was built with the help of University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Both Boeing and UW denied partnering with OceanGate in the development of the Titan.
OceanGate had partnered with the University of Washington to create a different submersible before parting ways, the university said in a statement.
Tourists signed ‘iron clad’ death waiver
The five passengers who boarded the doomed OceanGate Titan submersible that imploded on its way to the wreck of the Titanic signed an iron-clad agreement that protects the company from any liability for what could happen to the vessel, including death, the New York Post reports.
The three-page document spells out the risks that passengers take when riding in the 23,000-pound Titan, including eye-popping wording such as how the craft “has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and may be constructed of materials that have not been widely used on human occupied submersible.”
Mike Reiss who rode the Titan submersible in June 2022 described the waiver to CNN as “lengthy”.
“Before I boarded the sub, I signed a lengthy waiver detailing all the ways this trip could kill me: asphyxiation, electrocution, drowning, crushing — death was mentioned three times on the first page. I kissed my wife goodbye before I left, thinking I might never see her again.
In short, disaster was part of the package. This wasn’t a rollercoaster ride that merely seemed scary but was actually pretty safe. The danger involved was real.”
Expert urged OceanGate to push back tourism launch
A submersible expert who boarded the Titan himself four years before its Atlantic Ocean implosion once urged OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush to fully examine potential safety concerns before considering “taking dozens of other people to the Titanic”.
Karl Stanley claimed to have heard a mysterious cracking noise that got louder over the two hours it took the Titan to plunge more than 12,000 feet during his April 2019 trip in the Bahamas.
The unusual and persistent sounds were enough for Mr Stanley to implore Mr Stockton to push back the Titan’s tourism launch in order to fully investigate any fractures in the vessel.
“A useful thought exercise here would be to imagine the removal of the variables of the investors, the eager mission scientists, your team hungry for success, the press releases already announcing this summer’s dive schedule,” Mr Stanley said in an email obtained by the New York Times.
Though the source was uncertain, he believed the sounds signalled that an area of the hull was “breaking down”.
Mr Rush did not reply directly to Mr Stanley’s email, but the expert claimed the CEO did heed his advice.
OceanGate supposedly replaced the hull and called off planned dives for that year.
Hull could have caused implosion: expert
Structural issues with the doomed Titan sub’s hull could be among the causes of the “catastrophic implosion” that destroyed the vessel and killed all five people on board in the depths of the Atlantic, an expert told the New York Post.
Investigators are hunting for clues on why the submersible suddenly fell apart as it was descending toward the wreck of the Titanic this week.
While authorities say it is too early to tell the cause of the deep-sea disaster, one expert pointed to possible failures of the sub’s hull — its main body — as a likely explanation.
Virginia Tech ocean engineering professor Stefano Brizzolara suggested the sub’s pressure hull could have had a defect that may have fractured under the pressure and sparked an implosion.
“It is difficult to say what caused the structural failure in this case, but any small material and geometric imperfection, misalignment of connection flanges, tightening torque of bolted connection may have started the structural collapse,” Mr Brizzolara said.
Cameron lashes OceanGate
James Cameron — the director of the film Titanic, who is also an experienced deep-sea explorer — said the design of the Titan was fundamentally flawed.
“It’s completely inappropriate for a vessel that sees external pressure,” he told CNN about the use of carbon-fibre composites.
“We always understood that this was the wrong material for submersible hulls because with each pressure cycle, you can have progressive damage.
“So it’s quite insidious because you may have a number of successful dives, which is what happened here, and then have it fail later.”
Mr Cameron said it was “unconscionable” to take passengers onto the Titan without having the vessel certified.
“I think there’s a great, almost surreal irony here, which is Titanic sank because the captain took it full steam into an ice field at night, on a moonless night with very poor visibility after he had been repeatedly warned.”
Haunting image emerges
A haunting image of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush peering out of the Titan submersible that would ultimately implode, instantly killing its maker, has resurfaced.
The image was taken by underwater photographer Becky Kagan Schott.
Mr Rush appears grim as he gazes out of the Titan’s lone porthole during a 2018 testing trip in the Bahamas.
The late pilot’s face is surrounded by darkness inside the submersible, chillingly reminiscent of what the five-person crew may have experienced in the moments before the Titan’s infrastructure failed.
Mr Rush was one of the five people who were killed when the Titan imploded under the intense pressure of the deep Atlantic Ocean.
-with New York Post
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