June 23, 2023 - Missing Titanic sub crew killed after 'catastrophic implosion'

The US Coast Guard will lead the investigation into the Titan submersible incident, the National Transportation Safety Board tweeted Friday evening.

“The U.S. Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a major marine casualty and will lead the investigation,” the NTSB tweeted. “The NTSB has joined the investigation and will contribute to their efforts. The USCG is handling all media inquiries related to this investigation.”

CNN reported earlier Friday that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada is launching an investigation into the implosion of the Titan.

CNN has reached out to that agency to see how and if they will be working with officials in the United States on this investigation.

A father and son gave up their seats on the Titan submersible just weeks before the fatal implosion after they had safety concerns about the craft.

Jay Bloom and his son Sean said they were both worried about the submersible and its ability to travel deep into the ocean ahead of the planned voyage. Their seats ultimately went to the father and son who were onboard when the vessel imploded, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.

“I saw a lot of red flags,” Sean told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday evening after he was shown a video of tour organizer Stockton Rush walking through the submersible and its features.

Sean said he told his father he didn’t think the vessel would successfully make it that deep into the ocean.

Jay shared a text message exchange between him and Rush — the CEO of the vessel’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions — where Rush offered the spots on the vessel for the May expedition.

Rush then flew out to Las Vegas in March to try and get Jay to buy the tickets. Jay noted that Rush flew in on a two-seater experimental plane he built.

“He has a different risk appetite than I do,” Jay said.

Both Jay and Sean said Rush brushed off questions and concerns they had with the submersible.

“He had so much passion for the project that he was blinded by it,” Jay said, “He didn’t look at the things that I saw and that others saw that were problematic because it didn’t fit his narrative."

The father and son duo said they will not try to do something like this experience ever again after they watched the news.

“All I could see when I saw that father and son was myself and my son.That could’ve been us,” Jay said.

The Navy system that picked up a sound resembling an implosion on Sunday is part of an array of underwater listening devices that the US has had in place for decades. Primarily designed to track the movement of enemy submarines, the system has also helped in the searches and investigative efforts of incidents at sea, some very similar to the implosion suffered by the Titan submersible.

Initially called the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) when it was first created in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the array of sensors detects different sounds and acoustic signatures, which can travel great distances underwater. The system was renamed the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS) when the Navy added mobile and deployable sensors to its collection capabilities.

“The Integrated Undersea Surveillance System mission is multi-faceted, encompassing not only the operations of detection, localization and tracking of submarines and the collection of acoustic and hydrographic information, but also the maintenance of processing and communications equipment necessary to carry out the operational mission,” according to the Navy.

Because sound travels so well underwater, the sensors can be used to triangulate the position of an enemy submarine or an underwater noise picked up by the array. 

Though the system itself is not classified, according to a Navy official, its operation and collection capabilities are secret.

In 1968, the Navy used the system to pinpoint the location of a missing Soviet submarine, K-129, in the North Pacific. The US noticed increased Soviet naval activity and concluded they may be searching for a submarine. In reviewing the data collected by the system, the US picked up on the acoustic signature of an implosion and were able to pinpoint the location of the noise, far away from the Soviet search efforts. 

In the mid-1970s, the US would attempt to raise the ballistic missile submarine from the ocean floor using a cover story that involved eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes and a project to harvest minerals off the sea floor. 

The mission was partially successful, and it began with the detection of the implosion by the same type of array that picked up on the implosion of the Titan submersible. 

The listening array also helped in the search for two missing US nuclear submarines in the 1960s, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. 

The Navy is removing a deep ocean salvage system from St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to a defense official familiar with the matter. The move comes as fewer ships and assets are needed in the ongoing efforts around the Titan submersible search.

The removal of the system means the Navy will no longer have vessels or equipment as part of the recovery effort, the official said, though Navy personnel are still assisting. The Navy sent subject matter experts in conjunction with the salvage system.

The Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS) was brought into the search effort to assist with the recovery or salvage of the vessel once it was located. The system arrived in St. John’s Wednesday, but it remained there as other vessels with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) closed in on the search site and ultimately found the debris of the missing submersible.

Because of the smaller size of the debris from the submersible, it’s possible an ROV could recover pieces of the vessel if needed for further evaluation, the official said. The FADOSS system is designed to lift far larger and heavier objects out of the water.

The salvage system is capable of lifting up to 60,000 pounds off the bottom of the ocean floor to a depth of 20,000 feet. It is primarily used to recover aircraft from the ocean or other heavy objects. It was most recently used last summer to pull an F/A-18 fighter jet from the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Navy.

A company that certifies marine vessels says it “declined a request" from OceanGate Expeditions to certify Titan, the submersible that imploded near the site of the Titanic wreckage, killing all five people on board.

The interaction came months after OceanGate had defended a decision not to certify Titan in a blog post. 

Lloyd’s Register, a marine certification company, did not say why it declined to work with OceanGate on what is typically a lengthy, expensive process to certify a vessel.  

The two companies came together in 2019 for Titan’s first depth dive. At the time, OceanGate put out a press release saying the dive “was validated by a representative from Lloyd’s Register.” While it invoked the name of the certification agency, OceanGate did not say the submersible had been certified, just that the dive itself had been verified. 

OceanGate was touting having taken Titan to a depth of 3,760 meters (about 12,300 feet) near the Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, according to the release. Titan, it said, was the only vehicle that could both hold five people and dive to that depth.

In a statement to CNN, Lloyd’s Register did not dispute any of the details of the dive but said that that initial meeting did not lead to an agreement to go into the certification process.

“Lloyd’s Register declined a request from Ocean Gate to provide classification following a preliminary observation of Ocean Gate testing a Titan submersible in 2019,” the company said in a statement. “Lloyd’s Register did not go on to class the installation.”

In 2018, industry experts urged OceanGate to certify Titan to ensure its safety, saying failure to do so could be catastrophic. Will Kohnen, who wrote a letter and spoke with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush about his concerns, told CNN, “There are 10 submarines in the world that can go 12,000 feet and deeper. All of them are certified except the OceanGate submersible.”

The 2019 dive came two months after OceanGate put up a blog post defending its decision not to certify Titan, arguing it could take years, stifle innovation and “by itself, classing is not sufficient to ensure safety.” The timing shows that the company may have still been considering certification even after defending its decision not to certify.

CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment.

A CNN review of OceanGate’s marketing material, public statements made by CEO Stockton Rush and court records show that even as the company touted a commitment to safety measures, it rejected industry standards that would have imposed greater scrutiny on its operations and vessels.

The company also boasted of collaborations with reputable institutions that have since denied partnering with OceanGate on the submersible in question.

Some industry experts said OceanGate’s operations were known to be risky.

“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, said on CNN Thursday. 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.

To the public, OceanGate’s marketing sought to appeal to potential customers’ sense of adventure while also assuring them the adventure was safe. They 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,” 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.”

That simplicity was highlighted late last year when Rush invited CBS News reporter David Pogue on a voyage, in which Rush admitted that he bought parts for his craft off-the-shelf at stores such as Camping World.

In online videos, Rush explained the Titan’s unconventional design, which he said included carbon fiber to increase the vessel’s buoyancy. It “hasn’t been used in a crewed submersible ever before,” he said in a video last year.

The Titan also included 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.”

But in a separate interview with Pogue, Stockton seemed dismissive of safety.

“At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Stockton said. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.”

Read more here.

 

The operator of France’s oceanographic fleet honored Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of five passengers killed in the catastrophic submersible implosion, commending him as an accomplished leader and Titanic expert.   

“We are deeply saddened by the disappearance of this insatiable explorer of the ocean who made a lasting impression at Genavir. His dives will remain forever in the memory of French oceanography,” the operator Genavir said in a statement Friday.

Nargeolet spent 10 years at Genavir, carrying out deep-sea sub explorations. After joining in 1986, he carried out his first dive of the Titanic wreck one year later, according to the statement. 

Over the course of his time there, Nargeolet completed 39 dives on board the Nautile submersible, 20 of which were on the Titanic, according to the statement.

Nargeolet left the operator in 1996 to “dedicate himself entirely to the exploration of the Titanic and the recuperation of hundreds of thousands of objects,” carrying out two further dives in 1996 and 1998, according to the statement.

"Paul-Henri Nargeolet was a leader of men with undeniable human qualities who knew how to unite a team behind him and take it to the depths of the oceans," former Nautile pilot Jean-Paul Justiniano said in the statement.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is launching an investigation into the implosion of the Titan submersible, the agency announced Friday.

"The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is launching an investigation into the fatal occurrence involving the Canadian-flagged vessel Polar Prince and the privately operated submersible Titan," the TSB announced in a statement.

The agency is sending a team to St. John's in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to conduct the investigation.

About the implosion: Five people on board the Titanic-bound vessel were killed when it suffered a "catastrophic implosion."

An underwater implosion refers to the sudden inward collapse of the vessel, which would have been under immense pressure at the depths it was diving toward.

It’s unclear where or how deep the Titan was when the implosion occurred, but the Titanic wreck sits nearly 13,000 feet (or almost 4,000 meters) below sea level. The submersible was about 1 hour and 45 minutes into the roughly two-hour descent when it lost contact.

A spokesperson for Pelagic Research Services told CNN that a new mission to the submersible debris site near the wreckage of the Titanic is underway. 

The spokesperson, Jeff Mahoney, said that this mission of the Odysseus 6 remotely operated vehicle is to continue searching and mapping out the debris sites.  

The ROV's mission began late Friday morning and will take about an hour to get down to the location of the debris field.

This is the second mission of the Odysseus 6 ROV, the first having discovered the debris field that contained remnants of the Titan submersible.

Any attempts to recover anything from the debris field will be a larger operation, Mahoney said, because the Titan sub debris will likely be too heavy for Pelagic's ROV to lift by itself. Mahoney said any recovery mission will be made in tandem with Deep Energy, another company assisting with the mission, which will use rigged cabling to pull up any debris.

Mahoney said they expect to be on site conducting ROV missions for another week.