Titan submersible highlights: Authorities trying to figure out how implosion occurred

Experts say wrongful death and negligence lawsuits are likely in the Titan case but legal actions will face various challenges, including waivers signed by the Titan passengers that warned of the myriad ways they could die.

As multiple ships scoured the North Atlantic this week for the missing submersible headed to the Titanic wreck site, the US Navy had already detected an implosion on Sunday at the site where the vessel lost communications.

The information, which wasn’t definitive, was immediately shared with the US Coast Guard, and a decision was made to continue the mission as a search-and-rescue to “make every effort to save the lives on board,” according to a senior Navy official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, reported Bloomberg. 

Liability waivers signed by passengers on a submersible lost at sea during a dive to the Titanic wreck may not shield the vessel's owner from potential lawsuits by the victims' families, legal experts said.

The Titan submersible vanished on Sunday roughly two hours into its dive and was found in pieces on the ocean floor after what the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday was a "catastrophic implosion" of its pressure chamber, reported Reuters. 

Authorities turned their focus to determining why a submersible carrying people to the wreck of the Titanic imploded deep in the North Atlantic, as tributes poured in for the five aboard who were killed, reported AP. 

The announcement that no one survived Thursday brought a tragic end to a five-day saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search for the vessel known as the Titan.

The investigation into what happened was already underway and would continue in the area around Titanic where debris from the submersible was found, said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.

Industry experts say the five assumed dead are the first known fatalities in more than 60 years of civilian deep-sea submergence.

But even as industry leaders braced for increased scrutiny, they said it was difficult to forecast what sort of changes may come.

In the high seas where the Titan and other submersibles operate, there are no regulations and there is no government that controls international waters.

The first fatal accident aboard a deep-sea tourist submersible is certain to raise calls for additional safety regulations, but industry experts say any new measures may be impossible to enforce given the international nature of the business, reported Reuters. 

Moreover, they say the tragedy of the Titan submersible that imploded during its expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic was an outlier, given that the maker of the vessel opted against certifying the vessel, defying industry convention.

The former business partner of Titanic submersible pilot Stockton Rush said Friday that they put safety first when they co-founded their deep-sea exploration company.

"Titanic" movie director James Cameron has accused OceanGate Expeditions of ignoring safety warnings, after Rush and four other people were lost in a catastrophic implosion while descending to the shipwreck, reported AFP. 

Guillermo Soehnlein, who started OceanGate with Rush before leaving the company in 2013, said he was not involved in the design of the Titan submersible, but denied his old friend was reckless.

OceanGate, the operator of the Titan submersible said its "hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time."

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," it said in a statement.

All five people aboard a submersible that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic died -- likely in an instant -- when their vessel suffered what the US Coast Guard said Thursday was a "catastrophic implosion" in the ocean depths.

The somber announcement ended a multinational search-and-rescue operation that captivated the world since the tiny tourist craft disappeared in the North Atlantic four days ago.

Official reports have confirmed the death of all five persons who were onboard the Titan Submersible which had gone missing during a dive to the Titanic wreck on Sunday. Read more

OceanGate charged a whopping $250,000 per seat for the expedition to reach Titanic shipwreck site.

Renowned film director James Cameron has expressed his regret for not flagging the Titanic shipwreck exploration mission, which he thought was a ‘horrible idea’, earlier. In an interview to the New York Times, Cameron pointed out several flaws in the submersible which may have resulted in its implosion. 

From the design of the vessel to the material used, the filmmaker, who has dived several times including plunging in a self-designed craft to the bottom of the planet's deepest recess, has highlighted a couple of anomalies in the vessel which he thought would have been figured out by someone. Read more

Long before the submersible was operational, several experts along with marine operations director of OceanGate, the parent company that owns the vessel, David Lochridge raised alarms regarding the safety of future passengers.

According to the New York Times, Lockridge had earlier prompted the company that the vessel needed more testing before it is handed over to a new crew. He also stressed on ‘the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths’. Read more

The Coast Guard will continue searching near the Titanic wreckage for more clues about what happened to the Titan.

Officials say there isn’t a timeframe for when they will call off the massive international search. Mauger said that the prospect of finding or recovering remains was unknown.

The craft submerged Sunday morning, and its support vessel lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later, according to the Coast Guard.

The vessel was reported overdue about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Titan was launched from an icebreaker that was hired by OceanGate and formerly operated by the Canadian Coast Guard. The ship has ferried dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site, where the Titan has made multiple dives.

Amid the report of the Titan submersible implosion in the Atlantic Ocean, experts are raising the murky regulations on waters for deep-sea exploration. An academician went on to compare the submersible operation with that of the time when aviation was in its infancy period. 

“We're at a point in submersible operations in deep water that's kind of akin to where aviation was in the early 20th century,” said Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy.

“There’ll be a time when you won’t think twice about getting on a submersible and going down 13,000 feet. But we’re not there yet," he added.(AP)

As multiple ships scoured the North Atlantic this week for the missing submersible headed to the Titanic wreck site, the US Navy had already detected an implosion on Sunday at the site where the vessel lost communications.

The information, which was not definitive, was immediately shared with the US Coast Guard, and a decision was made to continue the mission as a search and rescue to “make every effort to save the lives on board,” according to a senior Navy official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. (Bloomberg)

A British man Chris Brown had reportedly decided to withdraw from the ill-fated Titanic trip, due to serious safety concerns. Brown had initially reserved a place on the OceanGate craft. Read more

The Titanic inspired a tear-jerking blockbuster and expeditions to its watery gravesite -- including a fatal one this week -- but viral TikTok videos peddle a stunning conspiracy theory: the ship never sank.

More than a century after it went down in the North Atlantic Ocean, wild myths and urban legends about the luxury liner have continued to swirl, including that it was doomed by the curse of a mummified Egyptian priestess.

Even more striking are a wave of TikTok videos asserting that the Titanic did not sink at all. Many of them have racked up millions of views -- never mind that the claim fails to hold water.

"The Titanic never truly went under," said a video by a TikTok user called "The Deep Dive," which garnered more than four million views.

"Everyone is familiar with the tale of the unstoppable ship that perished after colliding with an iceberg, but perhaps that isn't the case."

The wife of the man piloting the OceanGate tourist submersible when it imploded during this week's dive to the Titanic wreckage site is a descendant of a wealthy couple who died when the ocean liner sank in 1912.

Archival records show that Wendy Rush, the wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, is the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, The New York Times reported Thursday. Straus was a retailing magnate who co-owned Macy's department store.

Also, social media users rushed to conclude that just as designer of Titanic Thomas Andrews, who sank with the ship, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush also sank with the submersible both at the same spot.

Among the five members who were onboard the ill-fated Titan submersible, which had a ‘catastrophic implosion’, French pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet was known as ‘Mr Titanic’. He participated in multiple expeditions to the Titanic wreck and was widely recognised as one of the world’s foremost experts on the site, earning the nickname.

The 77-year-old had completed dozens of submersible dives to the crash site, leading the first recovery expedition to the Titanic in 1987 after joining the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.

The five crew members on the missing submersible that was headed to the Titanic died from a “catastrophic implosion” of their vessel.

The US Coast Guard drew that conclusion after examining debris found underwater earlier Thursday by a remotely operated vehicle. The debris was found 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the bow of the Titanic.

“We immediately notified the families,” Rear Admiral John Mauger said at a briefing in Boston. “On behalf of the US Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences.”

Search teams had sonar buoys in the water for more than three days in the area without detecting any loud, violent noise that would have been generated when the submersible imploded. 

But the position of the debris field relatively close the shipwreck and the time frame of the last communication with the Titan seemed to suggest the failure occurred near the end of its descent on Sunday.

The U.S. Navy separately acknowledged that an analysis of its own acoustic data had detected "an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion" near the submersible's location when its communications were lost.