According to the US Coast Guard, the debris found on the sea floor belongs to the missing “Titan”. There was therefore no chance of survival for the occupants of the boat. The White House condoled to the family.
The five occupants of the missing submersible “Titan” are apparently dead. As the head of the US Coast Guard in the north-east of the USA, John Mauger, said, a diving robot found debris from the “Titan”. The damage pattern matches a collapse of the boat’s pressure chamber. Mauger expressed his condolences to the families of the occupants and thanked the rescue workers who had been searching for the vehicle since Sunday.
The White House condoled to the family. “Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan,” it said in a statement Thursday night. The bereaved have gone through a “horrible ordeal” in the past few days. “We will continue to think of them and pray for them,” the White House said. It also thanked the relief workers and Coast Guard involved in the international search operation off the coast of North America.
Several special ships with sonars and diving robots had rushed to the search area 700 kilometers south of Newfoundland. The “Titan” was on its way to the wreck of the “Titanic” that sank in 1912 at a depth of around 3800 meters. The wreckage of the “Titan” was found around 500 meters from the wreck, Mauger said.
Head of the operating company among the dead
The company OceanGate, which operated the submersible, also sent condolences to the relatives of the occupants. Among them was OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British entrepreneur and adventurer Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and French Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
The five men were “true explorers,” with “a special spirit of adventure and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the company said.
Expert suspects “painless” death of the inmates
Former naval officer Aileen Marty, a professor of disaster medicine, estimated that the occupants of the submersible would not have noticed a possible implosion of the submersible. Speaking to CNN, she said the pressure on Titan was so great in such a case that an implosion would have happened in just a fraction of a millisecond. The human brain cannot grasp such a situation so quickly.
In an implosion, an object suddenly collapses if the external pressure is greater than the internal pressure. It is in the inverse proportion of forces to an explosion. Even the smallest structural defect can trigger such a catastrophe at great depth.
“Titan’s occupants died in ways they didn’t even know they were going to die,” Marty said. “Ultimately, given the many ways we can die, this is painless.”
US Navy may have registered implosion
The US Navy recorded the suspected mini-submarine implosion on Sunday using underwater noise monitoring equipment, according to a report. The noise was recorded shortly after contact with the “Titan” was broken, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a US Navy representative who wished to remain anonymous.
The recording was made by a secret acoustic surveillance system designed to detect submarines. The US Navy analyzed acoustic data “and found an anomaly that could be consistent with an implosion or explosion in the zone where the Titan mini-submarine was located when communication was lost,” he said Navy representative to the Wall Street Journal. The Navy immediately forwarded this information to those responsible for the search and rescue operation, the broadcaster CNN learned. This allowed the search area to be narrowed down.
Search for remaining wreckage continues
The search for the remaining parts of the wreckage will continue on the seabed, but the Coast Guard will also reduce its use, said Mauger. “We will begin to withdraw personnel and ships from the scene of the accident over the next 24 hours.”
Even before the discovery of the wreckage, the hope of being able to find the occupants alive had continued to dwindle. The oxygen on board the “Titan” would have been used up by Thursday. Since Sunday, when contact with “Titan” was broken, the rescuers had combed an area of around 26,000 square kilometers – slightly larger than Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Probably not related to knocking noises
It is still unclear when the “Titan” imploded – it is still “too early” to say for sure, said Mauger. However, sonar buoys had not registered a “catastrophic event” in the past 72 hours. This could be an indication that the boat could have been destroyed shortly after the loss of contact.
According to the coast guard, the knocking sounds that have been registered several times in the past few days were probably not related to the boat. It has not yet been clarified whether the sounds were of human origin – but they had fueled hopes that the “Titan” occupants wanted to draw attention to themselves.