Recovery efforts were underway Friday after officials determined a “catastrophic implosion” killed the five people aboard a submersible that had been missing for days in a dive to the Titanic wreckage site.
Search crews remotely operating an underwater vehicle discovered a debris field Thursday morning in the general area of the Titanic “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, said in a news conference.
The debris was found about 1,600 feet from the Titanic’s bow on the sea floor. Mauger said it was too early to tell when the Titan imploded.
After the craft was reported missing, the U.S. Navy analyzed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior Navy official told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system. The Navy shared the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.
Family member says Pakistani teen was ‘terrified’ of dive
A family member of the two Pakistani passengers killed in the dive says her 19-year-old nephew was hesitant to accompany his father on the voyage.
Azmeh Dawood, the older sister of Shahzada Dawood, told NBC News that her nephew, Suleman, informed a relative that he “wasn’t very up for it” and felt “terrified” about the trip.
She told the outlet that Suleman ended up going on the trip because it fell over Father’s Day weekend and he was eager to please his dad, who was passionate about the Titanic.
“I feel disbelief,” Azmeh told NBC. “It’s an unreal situation.”
Suleman was a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, the university confirmed. He just completed his first year in the business school there.
How many times did OceanGate go to the Titanic?
At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Virginia.
“On the first dive to the Titanic, the submersible encountered a battery issue and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform,” one filing says. “In the high sea state, the submersible sustained modest damage to its external components and OceanGate decided to cancel the second mission for repairs and operational enhancements.”
Where is the Titanic wreck on a map?
Missing Titanic submersible:Maps, graphics show last location, depth and design
James Cameron comments on Titanic submersible
Filmmaker and ocean explorer James Cameron, who directed the blockbuster movie “Titanic,” reflected on the eerie parallel between the Titan submersible and the Titanic in interviews with CNN and ABC News on Thursday.
“The (Titanic) captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” Cameron told ABC. “For a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
Cameron has embarked on 33 deep-sea dives himself to visit the Titanic’s wreckage site. He said his understanding is that the support ship lost communications and tracking of the submersible simultaneously.
“The only scenario that I could come up with in my mind that could account for that was an implosion – a shockwave event so powerful that it actually took out a secondary system that has its own pressure vessel and its own battery power supply, which is the transponder that the (mother) ship uses to track where the sub is,” he told CNN.
Prior submersible passengers express concerns
Science writer and CBS correspondent David Pogue, who boarded the submersible for a report that aired in November, told USA TODAY he was concerned about the vessel’s safety.
“There were parts of it that seemed to me to be less sophisticated than I was guessing. You drive it with a PlayStation video controller … some of the ballasts are old, rusty construction pipes,” Pogue said. “There were certain things that looked like cut corners.”
Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman from Germany, took a dive to the site two years ago. “Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” Loibl told the Associated Press. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick. The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10.5 hours, he said.
Contributing: Jorge L. Ortiz, Jeanine Santucci and Edward Segarra, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
