As U.S. and Canadian crews continued to search Wednesday for a missing submersible that may have only a day’s supply of oxygen left, more information was emerging about experts’ attempts to warn the company that owns the underwater vessel about the perils of its operations.
Documents show an OceanGate employee warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed, and leaders in the submersible craft industry told the company its approach to the enterprise could have a “catastrophic” outcome.
The 21-foot submersible was carrying five people in a dive to the wreckage site of the Titanic when it lost contact with a support ship late Sunday. Among those aboard are a British adventurer, two members of a Pakistani business family, a Titanic expert and the CEO of OceanGate, the company that owns the vessel.
A detailed visual look at sub:Maps, graphics show last location, depth and design
OceanGate employee warned company passengers may be in danger
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed that year in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.
Lochridge’s concerns primarily focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring – cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure – to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. Lochridge said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 5-inch-thick carbon-fiber hull.
— Associated Press
Red flags raised:Reporter who rode Titanic submarine says there were ‘many red flags’
Underwater noises detected
A Canadian aircraft heard “underwater noises in the search area,” the U.S. Coast Guard announced on Twitter early Wednesday. The noises prompted remotely operated vehicle operations to search for the origin of the noises.
“Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue,” the Coast Guard said. “Additionally, the data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our U.S. Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans.”
The statement came after crews detected “banging” and “acoustic feedback” sounds Tuesday while searching for the Titan submersible, according to an internal memo sent to Department of Homeland Security leadership obtained by Rolling Stone and CNN.
A Canadian aircraft heard the banging sounds every 30 minutes, according to the memo. Additional sonar was deployed and the banging could still be heard four hours later. The internal update did not state what time the banging was heard or exactly how long it lasted.
In an update Tuesday night, crews said more acoustic feedback was heard. “Additional acoustic feedback was heard and will assist in vectoring surface assets and also indicating continued hope of survivors,” according to the update.
‘Hours of breathable air left’
Capt. Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District in Boston said the Titan, as the submersible is known, had “about 40 hours of breathable air left” around 1 p.m. ET Tuesday, meaning its oxygen supply could get depleted by Thursday morning.
He added that an underwater robot had started searching in the vicinity of the Titanic and that there was a push to get salvage equipment to the scene in case the sub is found. Besides that, three C-130 aircraft and three C-17 transport planes from the U.S. military have been aiding the search, and the Canadian military said it provided a patrol aircraft and two surface ships.
Still, the remote location − 900 miles east of Cape Cod and up 13,000 feet below sea level − makes the pursuit “an incredibly complex operation,” Frederick said. As of Tuesday, a total of 10,000 square miles had been searched. The Coast Guard in Boston is combing the ocean surface and below water in search of the submersible, using tools including sonar technology and aircraft.
The carbon-fiber submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply when it went to sea at about 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate Expeditions, the deep-sea exploration company that owns the vessel. The watercraft was lost contact with its support ship, the Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, about an hour and 45 minutes after submerging.
Where could the submersible be?
Jim Bellingham, a Johns Hopkins University expert on deep-sea operations, told USA TODAY that there are three possible locations for the submersible.
One possibility is that it could be floating on the ocean’s surface after an electrical failure or some other mishap; another is that it is drifting in the water column − anywhere between the surface and the bottom − because it became buoyantly neutral; or it could be on the sea floor, perhaps tangled with something that won’t let it float to the top.
The first one is by far the best position, Bellingham said, because even though it would be difficult to spot the Titan amid the waves, “the Coast Guard is just awesome at this. They have amazing capability to see something pretty small in the ocean.”
Report: Experts warned OceanGate of ‘catastrophic’ outcome
OceanGate was warned its approach to the enterprise could have a “catastrophic” outcome, according to a 2018 letter written by leaders in the submersible craft industry obtained by The New York Times.
The letter was addressed to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush − who is on board the current voyage, according to the company − by members of the Marine Technology Society, an organization that advocates for ocean technology and education.
The 30-plus signatories said they were apprehensive about the company’s “experimental” approach to its planned exploration of the Titanic wreckage and about the vessel’s design, believing they could lead to safety problems that would have a negative impact on the industry as a whole.
The letter also says OceanGate’s claim that its watercraft design meets or surpasses safety standards is “misleading to the public and breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold.”
Contributing: Jorge L. Ortiz, Jeanine Santucci, Claire Thornton and Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY
