Tag: Science

Video views from the search for OceanGate’s Titan submersible show mangled components from the craft — and tell the tale of last year’s dramatic implosion, which led to the loss of the sub and its five-person crew.

The U.S. Coast Guard released two videos this week in support of technical testimony that’s expected to be given during this month’s hearings into the cause of the incident, taking place in North Charleston, S.C.

The hearings began Sept. 16 and will continue on Sept. 19 with testimony from Renata Rojas, who was a mission specialist on an earlier Titan dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic; and from Steven Ross, a marine biologist who served as OceanGate’s scientific adviser. Technical testimony is likely to come later.

Both videos were captured on June 22, 2023, by a camera mounted on a remotely operated vehicle that took part in the search for the sub. The ROV came upon the scene four days after Titan went missing, and provided the conclusive evidence confirming that the sub had come apart amid the deep ocean’s crushing pressure.

One video shows Titan’s aft titanium dome and ring, plus remnants of the hull and carbon-fiber debris. The forward titanium dome and its viewport can also be seen, not far away. The other video shows Titan’s tail cone, emblazoned with the OceanGate logo.

Whistleblower David Lochridge said today that his concerns about OceanGate and its approach to undersea exploration began long before the company built the submersible that imploded last year during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck.

Lochridge referred back to 2016, when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush crashed a different submersible called Cyclops 1 into the wreck of the Andrea Doria while Lochridge watched.

“He basically drove it full speed into the port side of the bow, and we could hear the cracking of the fairing as he got us jammed in underneath,” Lochridge recalled. “I’m not going to say how foul my language was, but it wasn’t good.”

At the time, the Andrea Doria expedition was hailed as a momentous achievement for OceanGate. But for Lochridge, a veteran submersible pilot who had joined the company months earlier, it was the start of a sour relationship with Rush.

During the second day of Coast Guard hearings into last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its five-person crew, Lochridge traced how he tried to sound the alarm about what he saw as lapses in Titan’s design and construction — and how he ran into resistance at the Everett, Wash.-based company.

The U.S. Coast Guard is beginning two weeks of public hearings into last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its crew during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck — but even before the start of the hearings, the official in charge of the hearings made clear that there’s lots more investigation to be done.

“The hearing is the first step in publicly showing the proceedings,” Jason Neubauer, chair of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, told reporters today. “We may hold additional proceedings. There could be additional witnesses interviewed. So, I would say it’s hard to give a projection on the end date for the investigation.”

Public hearings are due to run Sept. 16 through 27 in North Charleston, S.C., with the proceedings livestreamed via YouTube. They’ll delve into the causes of Titan’s implosion, which killed the five people on board — including Stockton Rush, the CEO and co-founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate.

The other crew members were veteran Titanic explorer P.H. Nargeolet and three mission specialists who paid OceanGate to participate in the dive: Hamish Harding, a British aviation executive and adventurer, plus Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleiman.

Soon after Titan’s disappearance on June 18, 2023, OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations, and its website literally went dark. These hearings will mark one of the rare occasions when people who were associated with the company will be speaking publicly about OceanGate’s activities.