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Icebergs ahead? This year’s Titanic trips will start early

MV Polar Prince at sea
The MV Polar Prince will be OceanGate’s seagoing base of operations. (Copyright Miawpukek Horizon Marine Services)

OceanGate Expeditions, which has conducted dives to the site of the Titanic shipwreck in 2021 and 2022, says it will begin its trips a month earlier this year, in May — a schedule change that strikes a chord with history.

“May is still considered to be iceberg season in the North Atlantic where the shipwreck of the Titanic lies,” Stockton Rush, president of OceanGate Expeditions, noted in a news release. Rush is also the CEO and founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate Inc., which has OceanGate Expeditions as its exploration branch.

Almost exactly 111 years ago, the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg during its first voyage, resulting in more than 1,500 deaths. The tragedy sparked one of history’s best-known tales of a disaster at sea — and also sparked interest in underwater shipwreck surveys like the ones organized by OceanGate.

Rush said he and his team were mindful of the potential hazard. “With this in mind, having a capable ship specifically designed for working in the icy Arctic regions is going to be very valuable for our extended crew of scientists, Titanic experts and mission specialists,” he said.

OceanGate Expeditions has signed a charter contract with Horizon Maritime and Miawpukek Horizon Marine Services for the use of the MV Polar Prince, which was previously operated by the Canadian Coast Guard as a light icebreaker known as the Sir Humphrey Gilbert. During most of its 64-year history, the ship cleared ice from harbors and guided other ships through ice-choked marine environments.

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OceanGate provides a guided video tour of the Titanic

Titanic's bow, as seen during OceanGate dive
An image from OceanGate’s Titanic expedition shows the shipwreck’s iconic bow. (OceanGate via YouTube)

The latest film about the Titanic doesn’t show Leonardo DiCaprio standing up on the bow’s railings — instead, a single slim filament of coral takes his place as the king of the world.

That’s just one of the scenes from “Titan — A Viewport to Titanic,” a newly released 20-minute video that recaps OceanGate Expeditions‘ dives to the world’s best-known shipwreck in 2021 and 2022.

The film was assembled from high-resolution video captured during a series of dives made by OceanGate’s Titan submersible — a vessel that was designed specifically to take its crews 12,600 feet deep in the North Atlantic Ocean to document the site, year over year.

“Mission specialists, scientists and Titanic experts helped OceanGate Expeditions capture over 50 hours of high-resolution 4K and 8K footage and images of the wreck site,” Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate, said in a news release.

“Titan — A Viewport to Titanic” is narrated by Rory Golden, a veteran Titanic diver and explorer who’s part of the OceanGate team.

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Explorers solve a 26-year-old mystery near the Titanic

Deep-sea life near the Titanic
Corals and other creatures make their home on a reef near the Titanic. (OceanGate Expeditions Photo)

During an expedition to the Titanic back in 1996, submersible pilot PH Nargeolet noticed a curious sonar blip that was coming from a site near the wreck. Was it a previously undetected piece of wreckage? An unexplored geological feature?

Twenty-six years ago, the pilot wasn’t in a position to investigate further. But now a totally different Titanic expedition has solved the mystery, with Nargeolet serving as part of the team.

Data collected during this summer’s dives by Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate and Bahamas-based OceanGate Expeditions — plus the scientific analysis supported by the nonprofit OceanGate Foundation — reveal that the blip came from a volcanic ridge that serves as a home for corals, sponges and other deep-sea denizens.

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High-def Titanic video reveals previously unseen details

Titanic anchor
OceanGate’s team took a close look at the Titanic’s portside anchor. (Oceangate Expeditions Photo)

Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate Expeditions set a new standard this year for documenting the condition of the 110-year-old wreck of the Titanic, thanks to a high-definition 8K video system that was installed aboard its submersible.

A sampling of the first-ever 8K video footage from the Titanic, captured during this summer’s dives in the North Atlantic, was released today. OceanGate plans to return to the wreck on an annual basis to track changes in the Titanic’s condition over time, in video resolution that’s roughly 8,000 pixels wide.

“The amazing detail in the 8K footage will help our team of scientists and maritime archaeologists characterize the decay of the Titanic more precisely as we capture new footage in 2023 and beyond,” Stockton Rush, president of OceanGate Expeditions, said in an emailed statement. “Capturing this 8K footage will allow us to zoom in and still have 4K quality, which is key for large screen and immersive video projects. Even more remarkable are the phenomenal colors in this footage.”

Rory Golden, a veteran Titanic diver who’s part of the OceanGate team, said the video revealed details he hadn’t seen before.

“For example, I had never seen the name of the anchor maker, Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd., on the portside anchor,” Golden said via email. “I’ve been studying the wreck for decades and have completed multiple dives, and I can’t recall seeing any other image showing this level of detail. It is exciting that, after so many years, we may have discovered a new detail that wasn’t as obvious with previous generations of camera technologies.”

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OceanGate updates its view of a tattered Titanic

View of Titanic's bow in 2021 and 2022
OceanGate photographed Titanic’s iconic bow in 2021, at left, and in 2022. (OceanGate Expeditions Photos)

After his second yearly series of dives to the Titanic, the CEO and founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate says the deterioration of the world’s most famous shipwreck is continuing apace.

“We’ll have some better data next year, but it definitely is in worse condition this year than it was last,” OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told me. “It’s going through its natural consumption by the ocean.”

Rush said the decay is particularly noticeable on the sunken ship’s forward railing. Scientists on the Titanic survey team should be able to get a better fix once they analyze the scaled measurements that were made using a laser scanner attached to OceanGate’s Titan submersible.

Surveying the Titanic’s remains on a yearly basis is one of the prime missions for Titan, which was built to withstand the enormous pressures experienced almost 4,000 meters (12,600 feet) beneath the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean.

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Science takes center stage in Titanic sequel

Titanic bow
The Titanic’s iconic bow juts out in an image from the 2021 Titanic Survey Expedition. (OceanGate Photo)

One year after OceanGate’s first expedition to the Titanic shipwreck, the Everett, Wash.-based company is gearing up for its second annual set of dives starting next week — and this time, science will be at center stage.

Last summer’s expedition kicked off what’s intended to be a yearly series of visits to the 110-year-old ruin, nearly 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. As any movie fan knows, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank during its first voyage from England to New York in 1912, causing more than 1,500 deaths.

The shipwreck was rediscovered in 1985, and there’s been a string of crewed and robotic surveys since then. But OceanGate’s plan is different. The 13-year-old company and its research partners aim to document how the rapidly deteriorating Titanic and its surroundings are changing on a year-to-year basis — supported by customers who are paying $250,000 each to be part of the adventure.

The inaugural Titanic Survey Expedition documented the wreck site in unprecedented detail, producing a baseline for tracking future changes. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said that expedition was “a bit of a shakedown cruise.”

“We did have a lot of technical challenges that we think we won’t have this year,” Rush said today during an online preview of the 2022 Titanic Survey Expedition. “We had weather challenges, we had COVID challenges. So there’s a lot of that stuff, but we still got the best imagery ever taken.”

This year, OceanGate’s science team will be focusing on the biology as well as the archaeology of the Titanic’s resting place.

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Scientists plan to analyze DNA at Titanic wreck site

Titanic bow
OceanGate captured an updated view of the Titanic shipwreck’s iconic bow. (OceanGate Photo)

What’s lurking at the Titanic shipwreck site, nearly 13,000 beneath the surface of the North Atlantic? Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate aims to help scientists find out by cataloging the genomic signatures present in the deep ocean.

Researchers will gather up water samples at different depths during a series of dives planned by OceanGate’s Titan submersible this summer, and then analyze the samples to identify the DNA captured within.

The results are expected to give scientists a deeper understanding of deep-ocean biodiversity, and may also shed new light on some of the enduring mysteries surrounding the world’s best-known shipwreck.

“This is groundbreaking deep-sea research,” Steve W. Ross, a research professor affiliated with the Center for Marine Science at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said in a news release. Ross took part in OceanGate Expeditions’ 2021 Titanic survey, and will be chief scientist for this summer’s expedition.

Over the past 110 years, the sinking of the Titanic luxury liner — and the loss of more than 1,500 passengers and crew — have provided the inspiration for countless tragic tales, including an Oscar-winning movie. Over that same time period, the rusting wreck has provided an artificial reef for life at the bottom of the sea.

“This study will give us an entirely different view of this one-of-a-kind habitat while also adding substantially to shared deep-water DNA data sets,” Ross said. “Water samples taken and analyzed using advanced genomics technologies will not only help us identify the lifeforms we can directly observe from the Titan submersible, but also will give us a full picture of the lifeforms we cannot see. This includes invisible signs of both microscopic creatures and larger animals that leave traces of DNA in the water surrounding the Titanic.”

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OceanGate’s sub is coming home after Titanic trips

Titanic bow
OceanGate captured an updated view of the Titanic shipwreck’s iconic bow. (OceanGate Photo)

After making a series of successful dives to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic this summer, OceanGate’s flagship submersible is returning to its homeport in Everett, Wash., where it’ll be spruced up for another round of Titanic trips.

OceanGate Expeditions officially announced that its 2022 Titanic Survey Expedition will run from next May through June, with fresh opportunities for mission specialists to take part in the adventure. (Because OceanGate’s customers contribute to operations at sea, the company doesn’t call them “tourists,” even though they’re paying OceanGate a fee of $250,000.)

The five-person Titan submersible’s dives to the Titanic, more than two miles below the sea surface, are aimed at documenting the condition of the wreck on an annual basis. This summer’s dives confirmed previous findings that the world’s most famous shipwreck is rapidly deteriorating — 109 years after the luxury liner struck an iceberg and sank, causing more than 1,500 deaths.

“Mission specialists helped our crew gather and review terabytes of the highest-resolution still images and video of Titanic and the debris field ever collected,” OceanGate Expeditions’ president, Stockton Rush, said today in a news release.

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The disappearing bathtub and other Titanic tales

View of Titanic bow
Mission specialists capture pictures of the Titanic’s iconic bow as seen through the Titan submersible’s window. (OceanGate Expeditions Photo)

For evidence that the wreck of the Titanic is rapidly deteriorating, you need look no further than Captain Edward Smith’s bathtub. That is, if you can find it.

The case of the disappearing bathtub, as documented by Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate Expeditions, is one of the most vivid indicators showing how fast the world’s most famous shipwreck is settling into the final stages of its decay, more than a century after it hit an iceberg and sank into the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912.

More than 1,500 passengers and crew died in the sinking, but the tale of the Titanic lives on in the annals of maritime history. The rediscovery of the wreck in 1985 grabbed headlines around the world — and James Cameron’s “Titanic” movie burnished the ship’s reputation as a cultural icon.

One of the touchstones of Titanic expeditions has been the bathtub in the doomed captain’s cabin, more than two miles beneath the ocean’s surface. As recently as a decade ago, photos clearly showed the porcelain tub sitting amid rusty ruins. But two years ago, an expedition team reported that the wreck was rapidly deteriorating and cited the state of the captain’s cabin as evidence.

“The most shocking area of deterioration was the starboard side of the officer’s quarters, where the captain’s quarters were,” Titanic historian Parks Stephenson was quoted as saying at the time. “Captain’s bathtub is a favorite image among the Titanic enthusiasts, and that’s now gone.”

So it was a given that OceanGate would try to look at the captain’s quarters this summer when its Titan submersible went on a series of 10 dives. The good news is that the bathtub hasn’t completely gone away.

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OceanGate sub makes its first dive to the Titanic

OceanGate’s Titan submersible is sent out from its support vessel. (Photo Courtesy of David Concannon via OceanGate)

After years of building, testing and dealing with setbacks, Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate has sent a next-generation submersible and its crew down to the wreck site of the Titanic for the first time.

“We had to overcome tremendous engineering, operational, business [challenges], and finally COVID-19 challenges to get here, and I am so proud of this team and grateful for the support of our many partners,” OceanGate’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, said today in a news release.

The first fruits of OceanGate’s 12,500-foot-deep dive in the North Atlantic include photos that show the frame of a stained-glass window and fragments of floor tile from the ocean liner, which hit an iceberg and sank during its maiden voyage from England to New York in 1912.

The loss of the ship and more than 1,500 of the people who were on board — plus the wreck’s rediscovery in 1985 — made the saga of the Titanic one of the history’s best-known sea tragedies.

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