titanic submarine tour accident

Search Day 4: Titan submersible debris found, all onboard presumed dead

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All five people aboard the Titan submersible are believed to be dead, and debris discovered in the search area was consistent with a "catastrophic implosion," the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The debris was found off the bow of the sunken Titanic, officials said.

The search for the Titan, which went missing Sunday after it e mbark ed on a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic , had been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected "underwater noises" Tuesday and again yesterday.

U.S. Coast Guard officials had estimated the five passengers could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET today, and the location of the missing vessel had remained a mystery even as the search intensified.

What to know about the search for the Titan

• The debris found at the seafloor was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," the Coast Guard said.
• The Coast Guard said today that a "debris field" had been found in the search area.
• The submersible disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, which is 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
• A sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the a senior U.S. Navy official said. The sound was not definitive, the official said.
• Those on board have been identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission; British billionaire Hamish Harding, the owner of Action Aviation; French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

White House offers condolences to families of Titan victims

The Associated Press

The White House offered its condolences to the families mourning the five people killed aboard the Titan submersible.

U.S. Coast Guard officials announced their deaths Thursday following the vessel’s catastrophic implosion in the North Atlantic.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan,” the White House said in a statement. “They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.”

The statement also thanked the searchers, including the Coast Guard, involved in the international effort to find the submersible.

“This has been a testament to the skill and professionalism that the men and women who serve our nation continue to demonstrate every single day,” the statement said.

David Pogue on the misinformation and misunderstandings swirling around the Titanic sub

Kat Tenbarge

Tech journalist and “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent David Pogue, who observed an OceanGate Expeditions Titanic shipwreck trip last year, the last before the Titan disappeared this week, said a “massive amount of misinformation” has circulated online this week.

In an interview, Pogue, whose  coverage  of the submersible last year has attracted renewed interest in light of the disaster, also responded to attacks on his reporting over the past two days.

Critics on Twitter have suggested that Pogue and other journalists undersold how dangerous the submersible was or even that he conspired to shield the company from accountability. 

Pogue countered that the safety issues were the “centerpiece” of his OceanGate coverage. “There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the deep-sea diving industry process,” he said. 

Read the full story here.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet 'knew the risks that were possible with this expedition,' stepson says

Tim Stelloh

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Navy veteran who died aboard the Titan, was “fearless” and understood the potential danger of traveling to the Titanic's wreckage, his stepson said in an interview.

"Anyone who gets into those submersibles knows the risks that could happen," stepson John Paschall said, adding: "Going into this, he knew the risks that were possible with this expedition."

Paschall described Nargeolet, who had led several expeditions to the sunken passenger ship and supervised the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, as “the world expert on the Titanic.”

The ocean, Paschall said, was Nargeolet’s “home away from home. He was just so comfortable out there and in any ocean and any lake or whatever it was. The water was just so connected to him.”

“And that especially goes for the Titanic,” Paschall said. “He put so much of his life into that ship.”

Paschall also recalled Nargeolet as a “really incredible stepfather” — someone who was respectful, loving and funny. 

While Nargeolet knew the risks of traveling in a submersible, Paschall said, he wanted to know more about how the company that operated the boat, OceanGate, had maintained the vessel and whether it had kept passengers properly informed.

“Were all the safety procedures followed as closely as possible?” Paschall said. “Was everyone aware of everything that was going on? Was there anything that was missed during any kind of inspection?”

19-year-old Titan passenger was ‘terrified’ before trip, his aunt says

Daniel Arkin

In the days before the Titan vessel  went into the ocean  off Newfoundland, Canada, the 19-year-old university student accompanying his father on the expedition expressed hesitation about going, his aunt said in an interview Thursday.

Azmeh Dawood — the older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood — said her nephew, Suleman, informed a relative that he “wasn’t very up for it” and felt “terrified” about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

But he ended up going aboard  OceanGate’s 22-foot submersible  because the trip fell over Father’s Day weekend and he was eager to please his dad, who was passionate about the lore of the Titanic, Azmeh Dawood said.

'We will miss him today and every day,' Paul-Henri Nargeolet's family say

Phil Helsel

The family of French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet say they will remember him for the rest of their lives after he and four other people died in the Titan submersible accident.

Nargeolet was an “extraordinary father and husband,” the family said.

"He is a man who will be remembered as one of the greatest deep-sea explorers in modern history. When you think of the Titanic and all we know about the ship today, you will think of Paul-Henri Nargeolet and his legendary work," they said in a statement.

The statement added: "But what we will remember him most for is his big heart, his incredible sense of humor and how much he loved his family. We will miss him today and every day for the rest of our lives."

Nargeolet led several expeditions to the Titanic wreckage site, completing at least 35 dives in submersibles and supervising the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, including the recovery of the "big piece" — a 20-ton section of the Titanic’s hull — according to Experiential Media Group, where he was the director of underwater research.

The family thanked everyone involved in the dayslong rescue effort and extended condolences to the families of the others who died.

Hamish Harding remembered as an inspiration

The family of British billionaire Hamish Harding and his company are “united in grief” with the families of four other people all dead in the Titan submersible incident, Action Aviation said in a statement.

“Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply. To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend,” the company said.

Harding, a former pilot and explorer, was inducted as a Living Legend of Aviation last year, Action Aviation said.

Family of father and son killed in submersible ask for prayers

Antonio Planas

The family of the father and son who died in the Titan submersible are asking for prayers and said they found strength in rescue efforts.

Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, were among the five people killed on the submersible that imploded.

“It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood," the family said in a statement released by the Dawood Foundation. "Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”

The family said they were grateful to the people involved in the rescue efforts, saying that "their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time."

"We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues, and well-wishers from all over the world who have stood by us during our hour of need," the statement said. "The immense love and support we receive continues to help us to endure this unimaginable loss.”

The Dawood family also offered condolences to the families of the other people aboard the Titan.

Acoustic 'anomaly' consistent with implosion had been detected, Navy official confirms

Mosheh Gains

Courtney Kube

A U.S. Navy analysis of acoustic data “detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” near the Titan around the time it lost communications, a senior Navy official said.

The sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the official said.

The sound was not definitive, the official said, and it was immediately shared with commanders, who decided to continue searching.

“This information was considered with the compilation of additional acoustic data provided by other partners and the decision was made to continue our mission as a search and rescue and make every effort to save the lives on board,” the Navy official said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the sound had been detected.

'Titanic' director James Cameron sees similarities between sunken ship and submersible

“Titanic” director James Cameron said he was astonished by the similarities between the ship that sank in 1912 and the Titan submersible that imploded with five people aboard.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the 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 said in an interview with ABC News.

“For a very similar tragedy, where warning signs went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world … it’s just astonishing,” he added. “It’s really quite surreal.”

Cameron said submersible diving is a “mature art” and noted many people in the deep submergence engineering community wrote letters to OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission, pleading that what the company was doing was “too experimental to carry passengers.”

The movie director said one of the passengers aboard the Titan, French dive expert Paul Henry Nargeolet, whom he called “PH,” was a friend he had known for 25 years. He said Nargeolet’s death “is almost impossible for me to process.”

Cameron said he's made 33 dives to the Titanic wreckage site and calculated he's “spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day.”

Cameron’s 1997 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is among the highest-grossing movies of all time, raking in more than $2 billion.

Ocean depth will make recovering bodies from Titanic submersible difficult

'i hope this discovery provides some solace': coast guard's mauger.

Marlene Lenthang

The desperate search for the missing Titan has ended in tragedy after debris from the submersible was found and its five occupants were presumed dead. 

“On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said this afternoon. "I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace, during this difficult time."

He said the unified command has been in contact with Britain and France, as the nations had citizens aboard the vessel. 

5 major pieces of debris led to identification of Titan, officials say

Undersea expert Paul Hanken said five major different pieces of debris told authorities that it was the remains of the Titan. 

“The initial thing we found was the nose cone, which was outside the pressure hull. We then found a large debris field, within that large debris field we found the front end bell of the pressure hull. That was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event,” he said. 

A second, smaller debris field was also found, which included the other end of the pressure hull, “which basically comprised the totality of that pressure vessel,” Hanken said.

Teams on site will continue to map the debris field on the ocean floor. 

Sonar buoys in search did not detect any implosion sounds

It's not clear exactly when the Titan imploded, but Coast Guard officials said that sonar buoys dispatched "did not hear any signs of catastrophic failure."

"This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel which would have generated a significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a news conference today.

Sonar buoys had detected noises in the water Tuesday and yesterday that were being assessed for patterns, but he said today "there doesn't appear to be any connection between the noises and the location [of the debris] on the sea floor."

Debris is consistent with a 'catastrophic implosion' of sub

The debris found at the sea floor was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said.

When asked if it's possible the vessel collided with the Titanic, he said it was found off the bow of the Titanic.

Carl Hartsfield with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said the debris data is consistent with an implosion in the water column.

" It's in an area where there's not any debris of the Titanic, it is a smooth bottom. To my knowledge ... there's no Titanic wreckage in that area and again 200 plus meters from the bow, and consistent with the location of last communication for an implosion in the water column," he said.

Dawood's older sister feels like she's been 'caught in a really bad film'

The older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood feels "absolutely heartbroken" that her brother and her 19-year-old nephew were aboard the Titan vessel.

"I feel very bad that the whole world has had to go through so much trauma, so much suspense," Azmeh Dawood said in a phone interview this afternoon, speaking from the home in Amsterdam she shares with her husband.

"I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to," she said, fighting back tears. "I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them."

Azmeh claimed that her nephew did not want to go on the submarine but agreed to take part in the expedition because it was important to his father, a lifelong Titanic obsessive. Suleman "wasn't very up for it" and "terrified," she claimed, explaining that the 19-year-old expressed his concerns to another family member.

"If you gave me a million dollars, I would not have gotten into the Titan," she said.

Tail cone of Titan found 1,600 feet from bow of the Titanic floor, Coast Guard says

“This morning, an ROV from the vessel Horizon Arctic discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor," Rear Adm. John Mauger, said this afternoon.

Afterward, the ROV found additional debris and it was found to be consistent with the "the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," he said.

The families of the five crew members on board were notified afterward.

OceanGate says those aboard sub have 'sadly been lost'

OceanGate issued a statement moments ago on the status of the sub:

"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.

"This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission.

"We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families. This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea. We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time."

Rush 'got unlucky,' friends say

Elizabeth Chuck

Rush, the OceanGate executive who is on board the missing Titan submersible with four other people, is an intelligent explorer who is adept at managing risk, according to longtime friends.

Rush is "one of the most risk-averse people I know,” said Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate.

Söhnlein said he last spoke with Rush about two weeks before the Titan’s expedition, its third to the Titanic site. Rush did not express any worries about the upcoming voyage.

“If anything, it’s the other way around,” Söhnlein said. “Any explorer will always tell you that on every expedition, on every mission, on every dive, something always goes wrong. You have to anticipate that something is going to go wrong. And the more guides you conduct, the more missions you conduct, the more expeditions you do, the more you start limiting those things.”

Another friend, oceanographer Gregory Stone, said Rush was upfront about the dangers of his missions.

“He wasn’t selling tickets like it was Disneyland. He was telling people exactly what it was — it was a dangerous thing,” Stone said. “He had taken every precaution possible, and he got unlucky. Something happened.”

Pakistani businessman is not a 'risk-taker,' friend says

Dawood, the Pakistani businessman aboard the Titan, is a "quiet and unassuming" person and not a "daredevil" by nature, according to one of his friends.

"I think he would want his legacy and his memory to be one where ... he wouldn't want to be seen as some daredevil, risk-taking explorer," said Bill Diamond, the chief executive of the SETI Institute, a California-based organization that searches for signs of extraterrestrial life. (Dawood is on the group's board of trustees.)

"I think he would want to be remembered as a humble businessman, curious about the world and fascinated by the opportunity to take this excursion and be on this expedition," said Diamond, who spoke to NBC News via Zoom.

Diamond said he believed Dawood would never do anything that would jeopardize the life of his 19-year-old son, Suleman, who is also aboard the Titan.

"I'm sure he would not have brought his son along if he thought this was something seriously dangerous," Diamond said. "I think he knew the risks, at the same time I think he felt that the technology was tried and tested and safe enough."

Coast Guard says 'debris field' found in Titan search area

The Coast Guard said in a tweet at 11:48 a.m. ET that a remotely operated vehicle discovered a "debris field" in the Titan vessel search area.

"Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information," the agency said.

Officials are planning to hold a news briefing at 3 p.m. ET.

Search is a 'needle in a haystack,' expert says

While remaining realistic about the chances of finding the Titan on the vast ocean floor, scientists are still offering a glimmer of hope.

Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, said in London today that it’s incredibly difficult to find an object the size of the Titan in a totally dark environment. He says it’s not going to be found with active sonar from a surface ship, but rather with a towed or autonomous vehicle that’s near the seafloor. Even those vehicles can see just a matter of meters.

“I’ve been involved in searches for hydrothermal vent sites,” he said. “We’ve had the vehicles just a few tens of meters away and missed them and then come back and find them. So it really is, you know, literally it’s just a needle in a haystack situation unless you’ve got a pretty precise location”

Jamie Pringle, an expert in forensic geosciences at Keele University in the United Kingdom, says the first 24 hours are critical in these kinds of rescue operations and that time period has long passed.

“So there’s always a chance. It’s never zero. But I think obviously the longer the time elapses, the lower the chance of success,” he said.

Larter called it a “desperate situation” buy says you try to stay optimistic as long as possible.

“It’s kind of unimaginable if people are alive, trapped in a submersible with oxygen supplies running down,” he said.

Chance of finding survivors 'close to zero,' retired Navy captain says

Corky Siemaszko

With the trapped Titan passengers likely out of oxygen, David Marquet, a retired Navy captain, said today "the probability is perilously close to zero that we will be able to recover them alive."

The Titan had 96 hours worth of oxygen, he told NBC News' Tom Costello.

"Things generally work up to the design spec, but they don’t somehow magically last beyond the design spec," Marquet said, referring to the oxygen estimates.

Dawood's friend says his death would be 'a tremendous loss for the world'

Ammad Adam met Shahzada Dawood at a United Nations conference in February 2020. Dawood gave a speech about empowering women and girls in Pakistan, and Adam was impressed by his remarks. The two kept in touch over the last three years, striking up a friendship via Facebook.

Adam, 34, is now "praying for a miracle" and hoping that Dawood and the four other passengers aboard the Titan will be found alive.

"I can tell you that Shahzada was a real great gentleman, a fine gentleman," he said. "I know everyone says, 'Oh, such and such is a good person,' but he's actually a genuinely kind-hearted person and you could see that in his actions."

Adam said Dawood dedicated much of his adult life to charitable activity, including donating to Covid relief funds in the early days of the pandemic.

"I hope for a miracle from God," Adam said, "because his death would be a tremendous loss for the world. He tries to help people who need help, and we need more people like that."

Teen trapped in missing sub is U.K. business school student

Henry Austin

The youngest of the five people aboard the missing submersible had just completed his first year at the Strathclyde Business School in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

The University of Strathclyde said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” about Suleman Dawood, 19, “his father and the others involved in this incident.”

“Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones and we continue to hope for a positive outcome,” the statement added.

Weather at site is 'pretty good' for search, marine forecaster says

Julianne McShane

Weather at the scene of the search consists of winds blowing at 14 mph with gusts up to 19 mph, according to a tweet from the Coast Guard , which added that there are 4 to 5 foot swells in the water and the air temperature is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chris Parker, president and chief forecaster at Marine Weather Center , described those conditions as "pretty good," adding that they are mild to moderate for the area, which he said normally experiences higher waves and stronger winds of 30 to 40 knots on the Beaufort Wind Scale .

"An average 30-foot sailboat would be happy in those conditions unless they're going into the wind," he told NBC News of the conditions today.

"Those conditions should not be at all problematic" for the search, he added.

'A lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t,' says Discovery Channel host who tested out the Titan

Josh Gates, the host of Discovery Channel’s "Expedition Unknown," told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday that he tested out the Titan for a possible segment for his show in 2021 and that "a lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t" at the time.

"In the course of going out on Titan and diving down inside of it, it just became clear to us at that time that there was a lot that still needed to be worked out with the sub," he said on "Anderson Cooper 360."

"Ultimately, I just felt by the end of that trip that I just couldn’t get comfortable with Titan at that time. I felt that it needed time to go out and do missions and kind of get into a groove before we were going to go and film with it," Gates added.

Gates said the Titan offers a more comfortable fit inside compared to other submersibles due to the carbon fiber i t is partially made out of , allowing it to be larger than other subs that can only fit two to three people.

"On the one hand you have this incredibly innovative, novel design; on the other hand there are a lot of unknowns," he said of the Titan, adding that it has been “very surreal” and “haunting” to watch the search for the missing submersible.

OceanGate CEO has personal connection to famous Titanic victims

Rush, who developed and piloted the missing sub, had a ''pressing need'' to document the Titanic’s watery graveyard — but he had a personal connection to the wreck, as well.

His wife, Wendy Rush, is a great-great-granddaughter of two of the Titanic’s best-known victims, Isidor and Ida Straus. 

Isidor Straus was the co-owner of the Macy’s department store. His wife, Ida, refused to be separated from him when the Titanic started sinking, giving up her own seat on a lifeboat to stay with him on board. Survivors recount seeing them arm in arm on the ship’s deck as it went down. 

Their fate aboard the Titanic was portrayed in James Cameron’s movie, in which an elderly couple choose to spend their last moments in bed together as water comes rushing onboard. Theirs has been remembered as a '' love story for the ages .''

According to the Straus Historical Society, Wendy Rush is the daughter of Dr. Richard Weil III, who is the son of Richard Weil Jr., a former president of Macy’s New York. Weil Jr. is the son of Minnie Straus, Isidor and Ida’s daughter. 

Wendy Rush, née Weil, married Rush in 1986, according to a New York Times wedding announcement . 

A tale of two disasters: Missing sub captivates the world days after deadly migrant shipwreck

Chantal Da Silva

As  rescuers raced to find  the five people who  vanished after launching a mission  to survey the Titanic, another disaster at sea that’s feared to have  left hundreds of people dead  has been swept from the spotlight.

Last week’s sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy sparked arrests, violent protests and questions about authorities’ failure to act or find a long-term solution to the issue. But many human rights advocates are frustrated that the world seems to have already moved on and that the resources and media attention being dedicated to the Titan rescue efforts far outweigh those for the sunken migrant ship.

“It’s a horrifying and disgusting contrast,” Judith Sunderland, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said in a telephone interview, reflecting on the apparent disparities in resources and media attention on the two crises.

“The willingness to allow certain people to die while every effort is made to save others ... it’s a, you know, really dark reflection on humanity,” she said.

Senior British submariner helps with search

Alexander Smith

The British government said today it has dispatched one of its senior submariners, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Kantharia, to assist with the rescue mission.

Kantharia was already embedded in the U.S. Atlantic submarine fleet and joined the rescue effort Tuesday, a spokesperson for No. 10 Downing St. said by email.

Britain is also providing a Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft to transport equipment involved with the search.

Dawood family says 'sole focus' is on rescue of father and son

Sabrina Dawood, the sister of Shahzada Dawood, 48, one of the five people on board the Titan along with his 19-year-old son, Suleman, told Sky News in a Facebook message yesterday that "the Dawood family’s sole focus is the rescue of our beloved Shahzada and Suleman Dawood."

"We trust that the family will be granted privacy as we deal with this crisis," she said.

She added the family is also "deeply grateful" for news organizations' "constant coverage" of the missing submersible, but that they "are unable to address any questions or comments at the moment."

Searchers will need to 'get very, very lucky' to find sub, expert says

Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England's University of Southampton, laid out in stark terms the daunting task facing those trying to find the cylindrical vessel. "The only way they are going to succeed is to get very, very lucky," he told NBC News by telephone early today.

On land, he explained, officials would have an array of tools at their disposal, from GPS and infrared tech to old-fashioned binoculars. "Underwater, that all goes out of the window," said Boxall, who believes given the extensive search by air that it's unlikely the craft is still bobbing around on the surface.

One way to scour the seabed is to send a robotic submersible down there with a light and a camera. That would be like going to an area twice the size of Connecticut "with a flashlight and just having a look around for something this small — it’s a big, big task,” he said.

Officials are also relying on sonar: bouncing sound off the seabed to create an image of what's down there, a painstaking task that Boxall likened to painting the Golden Gate Bridge "with a child's paintbrush."

If it lost power, the submersible likely drifted down to the seabed, traveling up to 15 miles on strong, deep-ocean currents that take water all the way to Antarctica, he said. Compounding that, this area is "very bumpy" and there is "this great big thing called the Titanic, which sank in the area, scattering all kinds of things far and wide."

Magellan ROV to assist in today's search efforts

The Magellan “working class” remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, will assist in the day’s search , Rear Adm. John W. Mauger of the Coast Guard said on NBC’s “TODAY” show.

A working class ROV has a manipulator arm that can attach to a hull point and potentially lift it off the surface, Explorers Club President Richard Garriott previously told NBC New York in an interview.

The Explorers Club, a society dedicated to scientific exploration and field study that two Titan passengers — Harding and Nargeolet — are part of, previously criticized the Coast Guard for not permitting the use of the Magellan ROV earlier.

Responding to the criticism, Mauger said: “We really had to start from scratch and bring all the capability that was available to bear on this problem,” adding that officials “made decisions to prioritize” what was closest to the site.

Coast Guard will 'continue with the search and rescue efforts'

Rear Adm. John W. Mauger said on the "TODAY" show that the Coast Guard is "going to continue with the search and rescue efforts" throughout the day despite fears of the oxygen supply on the vessel running out.

"We use all available data and information to prosecute those searches but we continue to find particularly in complex cases that peoples' will to live really needs to be accounted for as well," he said.

Mauger added that "teams were working really hard through the night" and that medical personnel were also moving into the site today.

Two more ROVs deployed

The Horizon Arctic, a Canadian-flagged ship, which is helping with the search and rescue mission, has deployed its remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, which is now on the seabed, the Coast Guard said on Twitter .

Meanwhile, the French government-backed vessel L'Atalante is about to deploy its own ROV, Victor 6000, into the ocean, the Coast Guard said .

Coast Guard's estimated time for oxygen running out reached

It's now 7:08 a.m. ET, the time that the Coast Guard estimated the oxygen on the missing submersible could run out.

The exact situation onboard the vessel, which had 96 hours of oxygen when it set off, according to its specs and Coast Guard officials, is not known.

Experts have pointed out that there are a number of variables that could impact the consumption of oxygen onboard.

"There are so many variables," Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England’s University of Southampton, told NBC News. “We have no idea how long they will actually last in terms of oxygen — all that we know is that it’s imminent.”

Social media users tracking marine traffic in search area via satellite

As the search for the submersible stretched into today, some social media users said they were following the effort and tracking marine traffic in the area via satellite.

"Never in my life would I have thought I’d be awake at 2:50am watching ships, on satellite, looking for billionaires stranded in a sub, AT the Titanic in 2023 but here I am refreshing Twitter again," one user tweeted , writing that the person was using the app MarineTraffic .

"I’ve been checking periodically all night," one user responded just after 4:30 a.m. ET.

"Haven’t been able to tear myself away from the computer for days now," another wrote .

The MarineTraffic app announced yesterday it was “making all positional data, including satellite positions, available for free for the Polar Prince in the ongoing search & rescue mission.”

Impossible to know exactly how much oxygen left in sub, expert says

The Coast Guard predicts the oxygen supply on the submersible will run out at around 7:08 a.m. ET today. But it doesn't quite work like that, according to Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England's University of Southampton.

"There are so many variables," Boxall told NBC News. "We have no idea how long they will actually last in terms of oxygen — all that we know is that it's imminent." One of the main factors governing the rate of oxygen consumption is the physical state of those on board. If their bodies start to shut down due to hypothermia, Boxall said, it would mean "they're using a lot less oxygen" — albeit presenting a new danger for the crew.

Although the Coast Guard has presented this timeline, officials know about these variables, according to Boxall. "It's not like" at 7.08 a.m. the rescuers will "pack up their bags and say, 'Right, we'll do a recovery operation, but we're taking the urgency off," he said. "They will still see this as being very urgent for next couple of days."

2 new vessels arrive on scene, conducting search patterns

Two new vessels have arrived on the scene and are conducting search patterns in the bid to find the Titan, a Coast Guard spokesperson said this morning.

The Canadian CGS Ann Harvey and the Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic, a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, arrived to aid in the bid to find the missing submersible, Petty Officer Ryan Noel said.

The Coast Guard had previously said the two vessels were en route to the search site.

Noel said rescuers were also in the process of trying to get “one of the newer ROVs onsite down there." He could not confirm which ROV that was, but said the Coast Guard would be providing updates as more information became available.

Search patterns show more sea scanned in bid to find the Titan

The Coast Guard released a new image yesterday showing search patterns so far as efforts expanded in the race to find the missing sub.

It also released search patterns Tuesday, with the difference depicted below.

Searchers had covered an area twice the size of Connecticut on the surface, and the search underwater is about 2 ½ miles deep, officials said yesterday.

Ex-senior naval officer has 'no optimism' about underwater noises

The search and rescue mission was given fresh hope after a Canadian aircraft detected "underwater noises" on Tuesday and yesterday. But Chris Parry, a former rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, says he isn't greatly encouraged.

"I've got no optimism about that at all," Parry told NBC News. "Put your head in the water, you’re going to hear a lot of mechanical noises, particularly in the vicinity of a disintegrating wreck like the Titanic."

He called the optimism "clutching at straws."

The Titanic brought them together, and a tiny vessel could doom them

The five-person crew rescuers are racing to find went missing after departing on a mission Sunday morning from the Polar Prince, a Canadian research vessel, to survey the Titanic firsthand.

The passengers are now at the center of a much higher-stakes race against the clock — a frantic international search and rescue effort that must succeed before the 22-foot vessel runs out of oxygen this morning.

The passengers are Rush, who lives in Seattle and served as the vessel’s pilot; Harding, a British tycoon who lives in the United Arab Emirates; Dawood and his son, Suleman, scions of a Pakistani business dynasty; and the French mariner and Titanic expert Nargeolet, who has been nicknamed “Mr. Titanic.” 

The men are likely bound together forever, no matter what happens next.

French deep sea robot arrives to join search

Due to join the hunt today was Victor 6000, an undersea robot dispatched by the French government that has the rare ability to dive deeper than the Titanic wreck.

The French research vessel L'Atalante, which is carrying the robot, has now arrived in the same area as other ships involved in the search as of 4 a.m. ET., according to the tracking website Marine Traffic.

Victor 6000 is so named because it can dive to 6,000 meters — some 20,000 feet. That puts the Titanic, 12,500 feet down, easily within its range.

It's familiar territory for Ifremer, the state-run French ocean research institute that operates the robot and was part of the team that first located the Titanic wreck in 1985. The institute dispatched the remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, this week at the request of the U.S. Navy.

It isn't able to lift the missing submersible own its own, but it could hook up the 10-ton carbon-fiber and titanium tube to another ship capable of bringing it to the surface, Olivier Lefort, the head of naval operations at Ifremer, told Reuters. “This is the logic of seafarers. Our attitude was: We are close, we have to go,” he said.

Desperate search for sub as oxygen supply dwindles

The search for the missing submersible grew more frantic this morning, with officials fearing the oxygen supply on the vessel could soon run out.

Coast Guard officials estimated that the Titan, which had a 96-hour oxygen supply, could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET, but the exact situation onboard the vessel, including potential efforts to conserve oxygen, is not clear.

The search for the sub, which went missing Sunday after embarking on a mission to explore the Titanic, has been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected “underwater noises” Tuesday, and again yesterday.

5 aboard Titanic tourist sub are dead after ‘catastrophic implosion’

The five passengers on a sub that vanished on a trip to explore the Titanic wreckage have died after a catastrophic implosion, U.S. Coast Guard says.

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All five passengers aboard a submersible that vanished while on a dive to explore the Titanic wreck site have died, officials said Thursday after underwater robots discovered seafloor debris from the sub that was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion.”

A robot from the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic discovered several major pieces of the 21-foot sub, the Titan , in a debris field about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John W. Mauger said at a news conference.

“The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Mauger said.

The families of the passengers have been notified, he said.

“On behalf of the U.S. Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families,” he said. “I can only imagine what this has been like for them. I hope that this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time.”

The five passengers were Stockton Rush, the pilot of the exploration and chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, which owns and operates the sub; Hamish Harding , chairman of Action Aviation, a Dubai-based aircraft dealer; Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a veteran and accomplished diver with more than 30 trips to the wreck site; and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and son Suleman.

OceanGate said in a statement that 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 ocean,” the company said. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

World & Nation

‘Catastrophic’ safety concerns raised about sub long before ill-fated Titanic voyage

Long before a submersible vanished on an expedition to explore the wreck of the Titanic, concerns were raised about the safety of the vessel.

June 21, 2023

The sub was reported missing after it lost contact with the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive Sunday about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass., the Coast Guard said.

Its disappearance set off an international search-and-rescue effort , as crews raced around the clock using specialized equipment to find the sub, which was designed to have an initial air supply of 96 hours. Officials also said it had only “limited rations” of food and water.

The search grew to 10,000 square miles, roughly the size of Massachusetts, and went 2½ miles deep. Through the days-long effort, officials maintained optimism that the operation would remain a search-and-rescue effort and not a recovery mission.

Assets launched in the search included American and Canadian aerial support vessels that scanned the ocean’s surface and subsurface using sonobuoys; U.S. Navy divers; coast guard and research vessels from Canada, France and Norway, some of which were equipped with highly specialized remote-operated vehicles that could work on the ocean’s floor; and assistance from commercial vessels.

A moment of promise came Tuesday when the Coast Guard confirmed reports that banging noises were detected on the seafloor by sonobuoys dropped from Canadian aircraft. Although officials said the origins of the sounds were unclear, they became the target of search efforts.

Sounds described as ‘rhythmic tapping’ on hull heard in search for Titanic tourist sub

The use of remotely operated vehicles in the search for the Titanic tourist submersible carrying five people has yielded no results, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

At the news conference Thursday, Mauger said the underwater noises , which were also observed Wednesday, did not appear to be connected to the sub’s location. The implosion would generate “significant broadband sound” that would have been picked up by the sonobuoys, he said.

Paul Hankins, a salvage expert for the U.S. Navy, said five major pieces of debris from the Titan were found, including the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hull. Crews also found a large debris field that contained the front-end bell of the pressure hull.

“That was the first indication there was a catastrophic event,” he said. A second, smaller debris field contained the other end of the pressure hull and other wreckage that compromised the totality of the vessel.

How The Times covered the sinking of the Titanic: ‘The annihilated Leviathan’

June 22, 2023

Officials said that the debris was in an area away from the Titanic wreckage in a patch of smooth ocean floor and that there were no signs the vessel collided with the historic ship. The size of the debris field and the vessel’s last-known location are consistent with an “implosion in the water column,” officials said.

Mauger said it is too early to tell when the vessel imploded, and added that listening equipment used throughout the search did not detect any type of catastrophic event.

However, a U.S. government official familiar with the incident but not authorized to speak to the media told The Times that technology designed to listen to the ocean for movement captured the sound of the submersible imploding around the time communications were lost. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which noted the sound “anomaly.”

When asked whether the victims’ remains might be recovered, Mauger said he did not have an answer, reiterating the implosion and underlining the ocean’s harsh conditions. “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor,” he said.

Like the search-and-rescue efforts, the investigation into what happened will be complex, Mauger said, because of the remote location where the event occurred and because it involves the government agencies of several countries whose citizens were aboard.

The composite material used to build the sub and a lack of safety systems will be the focus of a maritime inquiry, which most likely will involve Canadian and U.S. investigators, according to sources familiar with such operations.

Nine vessels were at the location Thursday, and demobilization efforts are expected to take place over the next 24 hours. But remote-operated vehicles will continue to map the ocean floor, Mauger said, and officials are working to develop a timeline of the implosion.

“I know that there’s also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen,” Mauger said. “Those are questions that we will collect as much information as we can on now.”

Entertainment & Arts

Commentary: As those aboard the Titan submersible suffered, social media laughed

The exploitative coverage of the death and terror unfolding in real time as the search for the Titan sub continued was compounded by the public’s reaction on TikTok and Twitter.

OceanGate has been running expeditions with “citizen explorers” to the Titanic since 2021 on its Titan sub, according to its website. But as the search unfolded, new details emerged that submersible industry leaders, oceanographers and former employees had long sent warning signs about the Titan.

The Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee at the Marine Technology Society, which advocates for marine technology and resources, wrote a private letter to Rush in 2018 calling on him to allow for a third-party safety review of the Titan. The letter said the marketing for the Titan was, “at minimum, misleading to the public and breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold.”

“Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” the letter stated.

That same year, David Lochridge, a former OceanGate employee, raised red flags about the Titan in litigation against the company, “particularly OceanGate’s refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design of the hull.”

Lochridge, a submersible pilot hired to do quality and safety inspections, said he was terminated for coming forward. He said he disagreed with Rush’s decision to “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.” In court papers, OceanGate denied Lochridge’s claims, and the case was later settled.

Rush had criticized what he considered red tape. “One of the jabs that gets thrown at us is: ‘Hey, you aren’t certified.’ But how can you do something new and get certified?” Rush asked in a 2022 article in Maptia. “If the rules exist for how to do it, then you are operating outside of the rules by doing something different.”

Referring to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, he added: “I think it was MacArthur who said, ‘You are remembered for the rules you break.’ We try to break the rules intelligently and intentionally.”

Times staff writers Richard Winton and Noah Goldberg in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Alexandra E. Petri is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered trends and breaking news. She previously covered live news at the New York Times. A two-time reporting fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, she graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism and international studies.

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Deep in the Atlantic, a ‘Catastrophic Implosion’ and Five Lives Lost

The vast multinational search for the missing submersible ended after pieces of it were found on the ocean floor, 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.

By Jenna Russell

A vast multinational search for five people who had descended to view the wreckage of the sunken R.M.S. Titanic ended on Thursday after pieces of the privately owned submersible vessel that had carried them were found on the ocean floor, evidence of a “catastrophic implosion” with no survivors, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The dramatic search effort, in a remote area of the North Atlantic 900 miles off Cape Cod, Mass., had mesmerized people worldwide for days after the 22-foot watercraft, called Titan, lost contact with its parent ship less than two hours into its voyage on Sunday. The grim discovery, by a remotely operated vehicle scouring the sea bottom, also trained attention on high-risk, high-cost adventure tourism, raising questions about the safety protocols followed by companies that run such expeditions.

“Our thoughts are with the families and making sure they have an understanding, as best as we can provide, of what happened,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, said at a news conference in Boston. “It is a complex case to work through, but I’m confident those questions will begin to get answered.”

Stockton Rush, 61, the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned Titan, was piloting the submersible and among those presumed dead. Others on board were Hamish Harding, 58, a British explorer; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, a French maritime expert who had made more than 35 dives to the Titanic; Shahzada Dawood, 48, a British businessman; and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, a university student.

The quest for the missing vessel was seen at the start as a race against time, as rescuers who hoped the Titan might still be intact hurried to reach the area where it had descended before its supply of oxygen ran out. Hopes surged on Wednesday, after banging noises were detected underwater by maritime surveillance planes; U.S. Navy experts analyzed the sounds for signs that they might be attempts by the Titan’s passengers to signal their location.

But on Thursday afternoon, four days after the vessel went missing, those hopes were extinguished by evidence discovered more than two miles beneath the ocean surface: the tail cone of the Titan adrift on the sea floor, one-third of a mile from the bow of the Titanic, along with the two broken ends of its pressure hull. The debris, Admiral Mauger said, was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of its pressure chamber.”

On Thursday evening, a U.S. Navy official said that underwater sensors had registered readings “consistent with an explosion or implosion” shortly after the loss of contact. That information was sent to the incident commander to help narrow down the search area, the official said.

Without conclusive evidence of a catastrophic failure, it would have been “irresponsible” to assume the five people were dead, the Navy official said, so the mission was treated as an ongoing search and rescue even as the outcome appeared grim.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the Navy’s possible detection of the implosion.

Asked about the prospect of recovering the bodies of the victims, Admiral Mauger said he did not have an answer. “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor,” he said.

The search for the Titan drew an international response, as French, British and Canadian ships struck out for the final resting place of the Titanic, ferrying high-tech search-and-rescue equipment. There was a robot capable of searching 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, and a hyperbaric recompression chamber used to treat diving-related illnesses. But the effort was slowed by the sheer distance they had to travel to reach the site, a journey of several days for some.

Search Vessels Around the Titanic Wreckage

Polar Prince

newfoundland

North Atlantic

the Titanic

Skandi Vinland

Deep Energy

The Canadian vessel

Horizon Arctic deployed

a remote-operated vehicle

that discovered a debris field.

The Titanic wreckage

sits on the ocean

floor, approximately

12,500 feet down.

North Atlantic Ocean

that discovered a debris field

containing remains of the Titan.

There is no indication that the vessel imploded as a result of a collision with the Titanic wreckage; the debris from the Titan was found in a nearby area where the sea bottom is smooth, said Carl Hartsfield, an underwater vehicle designer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who assisted the Coast Guard in the search.

Nine vessels remained in the area as the search for remnants of the Titan, and mapping of the debris field, continued on Thursday afternoon, but Admiral Mauger said they would begin to disperse in the next 24 hours.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.”

With his expedition business, founded in 2009 in Everett, Wash., Mr. Rush had sought to open up wider access to deep-sea exploration. Beginning in 2021, the company offered tourists, travelers and Titanic fanatics who could afford the $250,000 price tag a firsthand look at the remains of the infamous shipwreck that killed more than 1,500 people on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after the luxury liner hit an iceberg.

But Mr. Rush’s venture also drew concern and criticism from industry peers who feared that insufficient safety tests and lax precautions would put its passengers at risk.

James Cameron, the Oscar-winning filmmaker and expert diver whose 1997 blockbuster about the Titanic fueled a new wave of fascination with it, criticized OceanGate in an interview on Thursday for betraying the trust of its paying passengers by forgoing safety certifications.

Along with other experts, Mr. Cameron said the carbon-fiber composites used in Titan’s construction were a risk because the material was not designed to withstand the crushing pressure that bears down on vessels deep beneath the ocean.

Concerns about the company’s practices were not new. In 2018, three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — sent a letter to Mr. Rush, warning that the company’s “experimental” approach could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems.

The Titan’s final dive almost did not happen, as weather conditions failed to cooperate. When a window suddenly opened, Mr. Harding, a veteran explorer, saw it as a lucky break. “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years,” he wrote in a social media post last Saturday, “this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.”

His last dive was far from his deepest. In 2021, Mr. Harding made a record-setting trip to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean. A four hour, 15-minute drop of 36,000 feet, the trek took him nearly three times deeper than the site of the Titanic. According to a media report at the time, only 18 people had ever journeyed to the area, known as the Challenger Deep. By comparison, 24 astronauts have orbited or landed on the moon.

Mr. Harding knew the risks. “If something goes wrong, you are not coming back,” he said in an interview after the dive in 2021.

Conditions inside the submersible were not plush. Images from the company’s website showed a vessel with an interior like a metal tube, where passengers sat on the floor with their backs to the curved walls. There were no chairs, little room to move or stand upright, and a single viewing window , 21 inches in diameter.

Yet for some with money and a passion for adventure, the promise of a rare experience was worth the risk of death — a risk repeatedly detailed in the legal waivers signed by passengers, according to some who had made the trip.

The thrill of the outermost limits had called to Mr. Rush since childhood. In an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” in 2022, the OceanGate founder said he grew up wanting to be an astronaut and, later, a fighter pilot.

“It was about exploring,” Mr. Rush said. “It was about finding new life-forms. I wanted to be sort of the Captain Kirk. I didn’t want to be the passenger in the back. And I realized that the ocean is the universe.”

Reporting was contributed by William J. Broad , Eric Schmitt , Mike Ives , Jesus Jiménez , Daniel Victor , Anushka Patil , Emma Bubola , Jacey Fortin , Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs , Keith Collins , Jenny Gross , Anna Betts and Ben Shpigel .

Jenna Russell is The Times’s New England bureau chief, based in Boston. More about Jenna Russell

Search underway for Titanic tourist submarine with 70-96 hours of oxygen left: Live updates

Editor's note: This page reflects the search for the submersible as of Monday evening. For the latest updates on the race against time to locate and rescue the submersible, please follow our live updates for Tuesday, June 20 .

U.S. and Canadian rescue teams were searching Monday for a submersible carrying five people to the wreckage site of the Titanic after the submarine vanished deep in the Atlantic Ocean with four days' or less worth of survival capability .

The U.S. Coast Guard in Boston is leading the search for the missing watercraft, which the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said was reported overdue Sunday night about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, said two aircraft each from the U.S. and Canada were involved in the search, along with a commercial ship, and that further assets will be added as the pursuit continues into the night.

The operation's location − about 900 miles east of Cape Cod and up to 13,000 feet deep − complicates the task, as does the need to look both on the surface of the water and below, he said.

"It is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area,'' Mauger said at a news conference, "but we are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board.''

Contact lost with five crew members

The Coast Guard tweeted that the 21-foot submersible named "Titan,'' which left from St. John's, began its dive Sunday morning. The Polar Prince, the Canadian ship supporting the watercraft, lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later.

OceanGate Expeditions , a Washington-based deep-sea exploration company, confirmed in a statement that it owned the submersible − a vessel in the submarine family but smaller and less self-sufficient than the classic military sub.

The company's expeditions to the Titanic wreck site include archaeologists and marine biologists. OceanGate also brings people who pay to come along, known as “mission specialists.”

They take turns operating sonar equipment and performing other tasks in the five-person submersible. The Coast Guard said Monday there was one pilot and four “mission specialists” aboard.

“We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible,” OceanGate said. “We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”

Based on the company's information, Mauger said the submersible has a 96-hour emergency sustainment capability, which would include oxygen and fuel. "So we anticipate that there's somewhere between 70 and the full 96 hours available at this point,'' he said.

See the Titanic in whole new way: Full-sized, 3D digital scan shows scale of wreckage site

British tourist on board

OceanGate adviser David Concannon told The Associated Press the company lost contact with the submersible Sunday morning.

Concannon, who said he planned to go on the dive but had to cancel because of a matter regarding another client, said officials are rushing to get to the site a remotely operated vehicle that can reach a depth of 20,000 feet. The Titanic wreckage is believed to lie 12,500 feet deep.

Action Aviation said its company chairman, British businessman Hamish Harding, was one of the travelers on board . The experienced adventurer went into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket last June.

“Every attempt is being made for a rescue mission,'' Mark Butler, the company’s managing director, told the AP. "There is still plenty of time to facilitate a rescue mission. There is equipment on board for survival in this event. We’re all hoping and praying he comes back safe and sound.”

Richard Garriott, president of the Explorers Club − a New York-based group that supports scientific exploration − said he saw Harding a week ago and “his excitement was palpable.''

“I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site,” Garriott wrote in a letter to members. “We all join in the fervent hope that the submersible is located as quickly as possible and the crew is safe.”

Search to continue overnight

The Coast Guard said late Monday that two searches by C-130 aircraft had been completed and the mission would continue though the night.

"The Polar Prince and @Rescue106 will continue to do surface searches throughout the evening," the First Coast Guard District tweeted .

The Guard said Canadian and US aircraft will resume looking underwater and on the ocean's surface Tuesday.

Titanic facts: When did it sink? How many people died?

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. On April 15, at about 2:20 a.m., the ship sank.

More than 1,500 people died on the Titanic. Of the roughly 2,200 people aboard the ship, only 706 survived. 

The majority of the people killed were members of the crew and third-class passengers. There were 710 deaths in the third class and 700 deaths among the crew.

How many people died on the Titanic?: Facts about the death toll and the survivors

Tourists added for expeditions

In 2021, OceanGate Expeditions began what it expected to become an annual voyage to the wreckage. The company had said it would include about 40 paying tourists to the team of archaeologists and marine biologists on the trips.

The initial group of tourists spent $100,000 to $150,000 apiece.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Watch CBS News

What we know about the tourist sub that disappeared on an expedition to the Titanic

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: June 23, 2023 / 11:35 PM EDT / CBS News

Five people on board the tourist  submarine that disappeared  on an expedition to explore the  Titanic shipwreck  over the weekend did not survive a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," officials said Thursday.

The announcement came after the U.S. Coast Guard said the  massive search  underway in the North Atlantic had located a debris field on the sea floor, which was confirmed to be pieces of the missing sub .

"The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a briefing, offering "deepest condolences to the families." A spokesperson for OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the voyage, told reporters that the passengers, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, "have sadly been lost."

Here's what we know so far about the submersible craft and what led up to this point.

What happened?

A five-person crew on a submersible named Titan, owned by OceanGate Expeditions, submerged on a dive to the Titanic wreckage site Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince research ship lost contact with the sub about an hour and 45 minutes later, the Coast Guard   said . 

The Coast Guard first alerted mariners about the missing sub Sunday night, saying a "21 foot submarine" with a white hull was overdue and giving its last known position. "VESSELS IN VICINITY REQUESTED TO KEEP A SHARP LOOKOUT, ASSIST IF POSSIBLE," the alert message read.

The sub was lost in an area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, in the North Atlantic, in water with a depth of about 13,000 feet, which is about level with the depth of the Titanic wreck . Amid growing concern about its  dwindling supply of breathable air , search and rescue efforts by a unified command composed of several international agencies ramped up accordingly.

The five people aboard included an operator — later identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions — and four mission specialists, a term the company uses for its passengers, who paid up to $250,000 for a seat.

For days, the fate of the sub and its passengers was a mystery.

But after the debris was found, a U.S. Navy official said the Navy had detected "an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion" shortly after the sub lost contact with the surface Sunday, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported. The information was relayed to the Coast Guard, which used it to narrow the radius of the search area, the official said.

Such an implosion, under the intense pressure of the depths of the sea , would have destroyed the vessel almost instantly, experts explained.

"in a fraction of a second, it's gone," Will Kohnen, chairman of the professional group the Marine Technology Society Submarine Committee, told the Reuters news agency. 

"It implodes inwards in a matter of a thousandth of a second," Kohnen said. "And it's probably a mercy, because that was probably a kinder end than the unbelievably difficult situation of being four days in a cold, dark and confined space. So, this would have happened very quickly. I don't think anybody even had the time to realize what happened." 

The Coast Guard is leading the investigation into the incident, and the National Transportation Safety Board  said Friday  it will assist.   

Who were the passengers aboard the sub? 

CBS News confirmed that the five people aboard the submersible were  Hamish Harding , a 59-year-old British billionaire, business owner and explorer; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who had made multiple dives over the years to explore the Titanic; and Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, who was serving as pilot.

Just ahead of the Coast Guard briefing Thursday afternoon, a statement issued by OceanGate spokesperson Andrew Von Kerens offered condolences to the families of the Titan crew and recognized that all five people on board the submersible were believed to be dead.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," the company said in the statement. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."

When the Coast Guard confirmed the sub's likely implosion on Thursday, Mauger said they were communicating with consulates general in both the U.K. and France.

The Dawood family, of the large Pakistan-based global business conglomerate Dawood Group, issued a statement Tuesday confirming their family members were on the expedition.

"Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult time of mourning," the Hussain and Kulsum Dawood family said Thursday in a statement through the Dawood Foundation. "We are truly grateful to all those involved in the rescue operations. ... The immense love and support we receive continues to help us endure this unimaginable loss."

Nargeolet, a renowned French explorer and former diver for the French Navy who was part of the first expedition to visit the Titanic wreck in 1987, was returning for another dive aboard the Titan submersible. 

In a  Facebook  post on Monday, Rory Golden, an explorer who became the first Irish diver to visit the Titanic wreckage in 2000, said he was part of the voyage but was not on the submersible that went missing.

Search and rescue efforts

Authorities  said  early Thursday morning that a Canadian vessel, Horizon Arctic, had deployed a  remotely operated underwater vehicle that reached the sea floor . The ROV ultimately located what the Coast Guard originally described as a debris field on the sea floor, which included identifiable pieces of the sub, authorities confirmed that afternoon.

"This morning, an ROV, or remote operated vehicle, from the vessel Horizon Arctic, discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor," said Mauger at a news briefing. "The ROV subsequently found additional debris. In consultation with experts from within the unified command, the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."

"Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families," he added. "On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families. I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time."

Mauger said authorities were "still working to develop the details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response," and referenced the "incredibly complex operating environment along the sea floor, over two miles beneath the surface."

Paul Hankins, an undersea expert for the U.S. Navy, explained during the news conference that crews discovered "five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan." These pieces included, initially, the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hull. 

"We then found a large debris field," Hankins said. "Within that large debris field, we found the front end bell of the pressure hull. That was our first indication that there was a catastrophic event."

A second, smaller debris field was located shortly after, and the debris found there "comprised the totality of that pressure vessel," Hankins said. 

"The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," he said, adding that the team will continue to map the debris field area.

Asked by a reporter what the prospects were for recovering the passengers, Mauger said, "This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor, and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel. So we'll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time."

Discovering the Titan debris came after multiple agencies from the U.S. and Canada spent days scouring thousands of square miles of open ocean in search of the missing sub.

The U.S. Coast Guard announced Wednesday that  underwater noises were detected  in the search area and that searches involving ROVs were  focusing on the area where the noises were heard .

On Wednesday, three more vessels had arrived to join the search, including one with side-scan sonar capabilities designed to create images of large sections of the sea floor, the Coast Guard said in a  tweet . That vessel began conducting search patterns alongside at least two others, as multiple military and other agencies worked together under a unified command. 

Frederick said Wednesday there were five "surface assets" involved in the search , and another five were expected to join the operation within the next 24 to 48 hours. He said the team also had two ROVs "actively searching," with several more due to arrive to join the search Thursday.

The Coast Guard  said  it had C-130 aircraft searching for the sub, and that the Rescue Coordination Center Halifax was assisting with a P-8 Poseidon aircraft, which has underwater detection capabilities. Canadian P-3s were also involved in the operation and deployed sonar buoys.

Just after midnight Wednesday, officials said  aircraft had detected underwater noises  in the search area, and underwater search operations were relocated as a result, though the origin of the noises remained unknown. The sounds were picked up several times Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, according to the Coast Guard. 

"With respect to the noises, specifically, we don't know what they are, to be frank with you," Frederick said. "The P-3 detected noises, that's why they're up there, that's why they're doing what they're doing, that's why there are sonar buoys in the water."

News of the vanished submersible and subsequent rescue mission originally broke Monday morning. At the time, Lt. Jordan Hart of the Coast Guard in Boston told CBS News that personnel there were leading the rescue mission, and focusing on waters off Newfoundland in eastern Canada. 

The Boston Regional Coordination Center was managing the rescue operation, as the location of the Titanic shipwreck falls within the Boston coordination center's territory, according to a  map  of jurisdictions along the East Coast of North America.

That combined search area grew to about twice the size of the state of Connecticut, and the subsurface search extended down as far as 2 and a half miles deep, Frederick said, stressing that the search and rescue teams were dealing with an incredibly complex set of circumstances.

"We also have to factor in the ever-changing weather conditions, currents and sea states that expand the search area every hour," he said earlier in the week. "There's an enormous complexity associated with this case due to the location being so far offshore and the coordination between multiple agencies and nations. We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support and offers to provide additional equipment."

What caused the noises?

Frederick acknowledged that the sounds detected underwater by Canadian aircraft could have been caused by multiple sources. 

Following the discovery of the sub debris on the sea floor, a U.S. Navy source told CBS News that the implosion would be inconsistent with banging noises heard at 30-minute intervals. Those noises, the official said, are now assessed as having come from other ships in the area.

Carl Hartsfield, an expert in underwater acoustics and the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is on-site at the search area as a consultant, explained that it can be challenging to differentiate between "human sounds" and "nature sounds" coming from beneath the surface.

"The ocean is a very complex place, obviously, human sounds, nature sounds, and it's very difficult to discern what the sources of those noises are at times," Hartsfield said. 

Before the sub was found, Chris Roman, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told CBS News that, technically, it was possible that sounds from inside a submersible could have been detected, but that wasn't the only potential source of the noise.

"Sound travels very efficiently underwater. If people were intentionally making noises within the sub, it's very likely they could be detected with a sound buoy, and that position can be translated into a new search area," Roman said. But he also noted that, as Frederick mentioned in his briefing, "there's a lot of other things in the ocean that make noises."

The submarine

The unique submersible craft that disappeared was owned by OceanGate Expeditions , a company that deploys manned submarines for deep sea exploration and has in the past advertised this particular sub's voyages to carry tourists down to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic for $250,000 per seat. 

More than a century after the Titanic sank in April 1912, the wreck lies on the ocean floor about 400 miles southeast of the Newfoundland coast. 

OceanGate said recently on its website and on social media that its expedition to the shipwreck was "underway," describing the seven-night trip as a "chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary." In addition to one ongoing expedition, the company had planned two others for the summer of next year, according to the site. 

Because of the sub's oxygen capacity, it can only be fully submerged for a portion of the weeklong voyage. The sub has emergency oxygen and a 96-hour sustainment capability if there's an emergency aboard, Mauger said.

In a statement Monday after news broke of the missing sub, OceanGate confirmed the missing submersible was theirs and that a rescue operation had been launched to find and recover it. The company said it was "exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely." 

"For some time, we have been unable to establish communications with one of our submersible exploration vehicles which is currently visiting the wreck site of the Titanic," said Andrew Von Kerens, a spokesperson for OceanGate. "We pray for the safe return of the crew and passengers, and we will provide updates as they are available."

Inside the Titan

Dubbed the Titan, OceanGate's deep sea vessel, was said to be the only five-person submersible in the world with the capabilities to reach the Titanic's depth, nearly 2 and a half miles beneath the ocean's surface, CBS "Sunday Mornings" correspondent David Pogue reported last year. 

BBC News reported that the vessel typically carries a pilot, three paying guests and another person described as a "content expert" by the company.  OceanGate's site says the Titan, weighing around 23,000 pounds, has the ability to reach depths of up to 4,000 meters — over 13,000 feet — and has about 96 hours of life support for a crew of five people.

Last summer, Pogue accompanied the Titan crew on the journey from Newfoundland to the site where the Titanic as lost. Several dive attempts had to be canceled when weather conditions indicated it may not be safe. At the time, he described the Titan as a one-of-a-kind submersible craft made from thick carbon fiber and coated on both ends by a dome of titanium. 

In 2018, a former employee of OceanGate Expeditions, submersible pilot David Lochridge, voiced concerns about the safety of the Titanic tour sub and filed a lawsuit against the company . 

Lochridge, who was fired by OceanGate and sued by the company for allegedly disclosing confidential information in a whistleblower complaint to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said in a court filing that the Titan would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters even though that depth had never been reached in a sub with its type of carbon fiber hull. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters.  

Lochridge was not the only skeptic. The same year his complaint was filed, other industry leaders approached OceanGate with questions about the safety of its submersible. William Kohnen, president and CEO of Hydrospace Group, outlined his concerns in a 2018 letter to OceanGate, originally published by The New York Times, that warned of potentially "catastrophic" issues with the "experimental" sub, which was not certified. Kohnen told CBS News on Wednesday that although he did not send it, the letter was leaked to OceanGate and prompted the company to "amend a number of details that made sure the public knew" the submersible had not received its certification.

"The letter to Oceangate was meant as a professional courtesy to the CEO expressing industry concerns that the company was not following a traditional classification route for the certification of the submersible," Kohnen said. "The industry operates along an established and dynamic set of safety regulations and protocols that have served the submersible industry worldwide."

Ahead of his planned dive last summer, Pogue recalled signing paperwork that read, in part, "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death." 

Space inside the submarine was similar to the interior of a minivan, and, with just one button and a video game controller used to steer it, the vessel "seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components," Pogue said.

On his voyage, the  sub was lost for a few hours , Pogue said.

"There's no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages," he reported at the time. "But on this dive, communications somehow broke down."

You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard…Here’s the relevant part of that story. https://t.co/7FhcMs0oeH pic.twitter.com/ClaNg5nzj8 — David Pogue (@Pogue) June 19, 2023

Were conditions right for the dive?

G. Michael Harris, founder of RMS Titanic, Inc. — a company that salvages artifacts from the Titanic wreckage — told CBS News on Tuesday evening that Titanic expeditions are generally conducted within a "three-month weather window" between the end of June and September, when the ocean waters are at their calmest.

Harris, who has led several expeditions to the wreckage site, questioned why the Titan's dive was conducted as early as Sunday.

"Right now, it's really early in the season. I'm not sure why OceanGate went out this soon," Harris said.

Harris also noted that when he conducts diving expeditions, he uses a transponder system, something that he believed the Titan likely did not have.

"It's a net that we navigate in so that we know where we are at all times on the wreck of the Titanic," Harris said. "We're in constant communication with the vessel up top."

Harris said the Titan was "put on a sled and dumped in the water and their only navigation is from the support ship up top."

"I don't adhere to that myself, personally," Harris said. 

Harris noted that he has worked with Nargeolet, who is listed as director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, for the past 30 years, describing him as an "all-around good guy."

Who was Hamish Harding?

Harding, the first of the passengers to be publicly identified, had previously posted on social media about joining the Titanic shipwreck expedition.

In a post shared to his  Facebook  page on Saturday, Harding wrote: "I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic."

I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist... Posted by Hamish Harding on  Saturday, June 17, 2023

"Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023," Harding's Facebook post continued. "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am tomorrow morning. Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do."

That post was Harding's most recent social media update related to the submarine trip. It included multiple photographs of him, including one that showed Harding signing his name on a banner that read "Titanic Expedition Mission V" and another that pictured the submersible vessel itself.

Richard Garriott de Cayeux, president of The Explorers Club, where Harding helped found the board of trustees, said they had spoken just a week earlier about the expedition. 

"When I saw Hamish last week at the Global Exploration Summit, his excitement about this expedition was palpable. I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site," he said in a letter to club members after the sub's disappearance.

Harding was a veteran adventure tourist who also  traveled to space  aboard a Blue Origin rocket last year. Two years ago, he made it to the deepest part of the ocean, traveling with U.S. explorer  Victor Vescovo  to the floor of the Mariana Trench, 35,876 feet below the sea surface. That trip, in a $48 million submersible, earned both explorers the Guinness World Record for the  longest distance traveled  at the deepest part of the ocean by a crewed vessel.

"It was potentially scary, but I was so busy doing so many things — navigating and triangulating my position — that I did not really have time to be scared," Harding told  The Week  after that excursion.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Monday, June 19. Reporting contributed by Emmet Lyons, Roxana Saberi, Alex Sundby, Aimee Picchi, Aliza Chasan, Li Cohen, Caroline Hinson, Anna Noryskiewicz, Analisa Novak and other CBS News staff.

• Newfoundland
• United States Coast Guard

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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Titanic sub destroyed in 'catastrophic implosion,' all five aboard dead

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June 22, 2023 - Missing Titanic sub crew killed after 'catastrophic implosion'

By Helen Regan , Adam Renton, Rob Picheta , Aditi Sangal , Elise Hammond , Matt Meyer , Tori B. Powell and Maureen Chowdhury , CNN

Here's what we know about safety concerns surrounding the Titan submersible

From CNN staff

Industry leaders had raised a number of safety concerns about the Titan submersible before its disappearance.

Titan's operator, OceanGate Expeditions, has also faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years, according to court records.

Here's what we know about those safety fears:

• Workers' unease: Court filings reveal two former OceanGate employees separately raised similar safety concerns about the thickness of the submersible’s hull. One former OceanGate worker told CNN the hull had only been built to 5 inches thick, when company engineers told him they had expected it to be 2 inches thicker.
• Experts' doubts: Industry leaders expressed unease five years ago about OceanGate's "experimental approach" to the Titan and its planned Titanic trip. The Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of  the Marine Technology Society  wrote to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in 2018 and specifically expressed concern over the company's compliance with a maritime risk assessment certification known as DNV-GL. "There are 10 submarines in the world that can go 12,000 ft and deeper," said Will Kohnen of the Marine Technology Society. "All of them are certified except the OceanGate submersible."   OceanGate did not respond to a request from CNN to comment on the letter, which was  obtained by CNN  and first reported by the New York Times.  
• Vessel not classed: The Titan is  not subject to government regulations  from independent groups that set safety standards because the  technology is so new  and hasn’t yet been reviewed, the tour operator has claimed. Most chartered vessels, whether oil tankers or commercial ships, are "classed" by independent groups that set safety standards. But the Titan is not classed, a 2019 blog post from the company said, adding that classing innovative designs often requires a multiyear approval process, which gets in the way of rapid innovation.
• Delays and mechanical problems: London-based travel firm Henry Cookson Adventures accused OceanGate of not having a “seaworthy vessel” when it entered an agreement in 2016 to take up to nine passengers to the Titanic in 2018. A civil suit filed in 2021, which was later dismissed, questioned whether delays to the trip were perhaps "because the submersible vessel was unable to be certified at the time for safe operations." A 2018 post on OceanGate’s website said  "delays caused by weather and lightning" prevented it from completing a series of test dives.
• Multiple delays: A Florida couple alleged in a lawsuit earlier this year that they were unable to get a refund after their planned Titanic expedition in 2018 with OceanGate was repeatedly postponed, CNN previously reported . 
• Hull rebuilt: Some expeditions were delayed after OceanGate was forced to rebuild the Titan’s hull because it showed “cyclic fatigue” and wouldn’t be able to travel deep enough to reach the Titanic’s wreckage,  according to a 2020 article  by GeekWire, which interviewed CEO Rush.
• Vessel lost: In another high-profile cancellation, OceanGate took CBS News’ David Pogue for a dive on its submersible last year, but called off the trip due to an equipment malfunction after descending just 37 feet, Pogue  said in the broadcast . In a later dive, the vessel lost contact with its ship and was unable to find the wreckage. “We were lost for 2-and-a-half-hours,” a passenger told CBS.
• Battery issue: A November court filing from an adviser to the company said in one dive, the sub encountered a battery issue and had to be “manually attached to its lifting platform,” which led to "sustained modest damage to its external components."
• OceanGate on safety: In a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specs and a hull monitoring system that he called "an unparalleled safety feature." The filing lays out the Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailed its 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull. The filing says OceanGate’s vessel was the result of more than eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”
• But those claims are disputed: The University of Washington said the laboratory never dealt with design, engineering or testing for Titan. The university said its collaboration with OceanGate "resulted in a steel-hulled vessel, named the Cyclops 1, that can travel to 500 meters depth, which is far shallower than the depths that OceanGate’s TITAN submersible traveled to." Separately, Boeing said they were not a partner on the Titan and they did not design or build the submersible, despite a  2021 press release  from OceanGate listing the company as a "partner." OceanGate told CNN it was unable to provide additional information about its relationship with Boeing.

Titan pilot Stockton Rush said in 2021 he's "broken some rules" to build the now-missing submersible

From CNN's Allison Morrow

Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and  one of five people on the submersible missing  in the North Atlantic, has cultivated a reputation as a kind of modern-day Jacques Cousteau — a nature lover, adventurer and visionary.

Rush, 61, has approached his dream of deep-sea exploration with child-like verve and an antipathy toward regulations — a pattern that has come into sharp relief since Sunday night, when his vessel, the Titan, went missing.

“At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Stockton  told journalist David Pogue in an interview last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.”

In another interview, Stockton boasted that he’d "broken some rules" in his career.

“I think it was General MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules you break,” Rush said in a video interview  with YouTuber Alan Estrada last year. “And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”

Ocean exploration: Rush said he believes deeply that the sea, rather than the sky, offers humanity the best shot at survival when the Earth’s surface becomes uninhabitable.

“The future of mankind is underwater, it’s not on Mars,”  he told Estrada . “We will have a base underwater … If we trash this planet, the best life boat for mankind is underwater.”

In his eagerness to explore, Rush has often appeared skeptical, if not dismissive, of regulations that might slow innovation.

The commercial sub industry is “obscenely safe” he told Smithsonian Magazine  in 2019, “because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”

Read more about Stockton Rush here.

Search for the missing submersible is entering a critical fifth day. Here's what you need to know

The search for the missing Titan submersible is now in a critical stage, as rescue teams race overnight to locate the vessel before oxygen supplies run out.

The submersible begins each trip with 96 hours of life support and has been missing since Sunday, setting up Thursday morning as a key target for finding the vessel and those on board.

On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard widened the search area and rerouted some of its equipment to try to pinpoint banging sounds heard during the aerial search in the remote North Atlantic area. Though it didn't yield any results, the sonar devices from the Canadian P-3 aircraft are being analyzed by the US Navy, officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a fleet of ships and specialized equipment has been deployed, including a US Navy deep ocean salvage system and Canadian Coast Guard ship John Cabot , which has "side scanning sonar capabilities."

Here's the latest:

• How the sub went missing:  The vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, began its two-hour descent to the wreck of the Titanic on Sunday morning. (See how deep the wreckage is here. ) It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the craft to the location in the North Atlantic, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said. Search operations began later that day. It’s still not clear what happened to the submersible, why it lost contact, and how close it was to the Titanic when it went missing.
• What we know about the noises : Banging noises were identified by Canadian aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipment was relocated to where the noises were detected, according to Capt. Jamie Frederick, the response coordinator for the First Coast Guard District. But searches in the area "yielded negative results," he said. Data from the plane that identified the noises was sent to the US Navy, but has so far been inconclusive," Frederick said, adding that the Coast Guard does not know what the sounds were.
• What it could be like onboard: Officials believe the five people on board have "limited rations" of food and water. Ret. Navy Capt. David Marquet, a former submarine captain, told CNN the near-freezing water at that depth is probably making the situation very uncomfortable. "There's frost on the inside of the parts of the submarine. They're all huddled together trying to conserve their body heat. They're running low on oxygen and they're exhaling carbon dioxide," he said.
• The Polar Prince: The support vessel that brought the submersible to the dive site will remain in the ocean until the search is complete , the operator said Wednesday. Horizon Maritime Services said the Polar Prince's role is to support the Coast Guard and that searchers are "very aware of the time sensitivity around this mission." There is a crew of 17 people on the vessel, said Sean Leet, the company's co-founder and chairman.
• Specialized equipment: If search crews locate the missing submersible deep in the ocean, authorities will then face a highly complex recovery mission. A US Navy salvage system arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday, a Navy official said. The Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS) is capable of retrieving objects or vessels off the bottom of the ocean floor up to a depth of 20,000 feet, but needs first to be welded to a ship which could take a full day, the official said.
• More safety concerns: An industry leader said OceanGate Expeditions strayed from industry norms by declining a voluntary, rigorous safety review of Titan. “There are 10 submarines in the world that can go 12,000 feet and deeper,” said Will Kohnen of the Marine Technology Society. “All of them are certified except the Oceangate submersible.”   Court filings also reveal OceanGate years ago was confronted with  safety concerns about the vessel.  Records also show the company faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years.
• 2021 claims disputed: The University of Washington reiterated Wednesday that they were not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the Titan submersible, despite assertions that they were, according to a 2021 court filing by OceanGate. CNN reached out to OceanGate for comment. Separately, Boeing also released a statement saying they were not a partner on the Titan and they did not design or build the submersible, despite a  2021 press release  from OceanGate listing the company as a "partner." OceanGate told CNN it was unable to provide additional information about its relationship with Boeing.

US Coast Guard provides new search pattern graphic

The United States Coast Guard provided  a new graphic  Wednesday night showing the updated search pattern for the Titan submersible.

The USCG also said the following assets are on their way to the site to assist in the search:

• Canadian CGS Ann Harvey 
• Canadian CGS Terry Fox 
• Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic (ROV) 
• French Research Vessel L’Atalante (ROV) 
• His Majesty's Canadian Ship Glace Bay (mobile decompression chamber and medical personnel) 
• Air National Guard C-130  
• ROV from Magellan

This is who's on board the missing submersible

Authorities said the Titan submersible was carrying five people when its mothership lost contact with it on Sunday, about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent to explore the Titanic wreckage. 

Here's what we know about the people on board:

Paul-Henri Nargeolet , a French diver with decades of experience exploring the Titanic, is on the vessel, according to his family.

Nargeolet serves as the director of underwater research at RMS Titanic Inc., the company that has exclusive rights to salvage artifacts from the ship. According to his biography on the company's website, Nargeolet completed 35 dives to the wreck and supervised the recovery of 5,000 artifacts. He spent 22 years in the French Navy, where he rose to the rank of commander, the website says. 

British billionaire explorer  Hamish Harding  is on the submersible, his company Action Aviation said in a social media statement.

Harding made headlines in 2019 for being part of a flight crew that broke the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe via both poles. In 2020, he became one of the first people to dive to Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, widely believed to be the deepest point in the world's oceans. Last year, he paid an undisclosed sum of money for one of the seats on Blue Origin's space flight. 

The family of  Shahzada Dawood  and his son,  Suleman Dawood , said the two are on board. A family statement said the duo had taken the "journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean."

The Dawoods are a prominent Pakistani business family. Dawood Hercules Corporation, their business, is among the largest corporations in the country, with a portfolio spanning energy, petrochemicals, fertilizers, IT, food and agriculture.

OceanGate CEO and founder  Stockton Rush  is among the five onboard, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan.

The company did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment about Rush being aboard. According to the company's social media posts, he has previously piloted "Titan," the missing vessel.

What the explorers aboard the missing submersible would expect on their trip

The missing submersible's trip to the wreckage of the Titanic was the final expedition of five such tours scheduled for this year, an archived version of the operator's website said.

OceanGate Expeditions said each eight-day trip is a "unique travel experience" that also helps the scientific community as "every dive also has a scientific objective," according to an archived version of the itinerary seen by CNN, which is no longer accessible on their website.

Here's an overview of the itinerary:

• Day 1:  Divers arrive at St. John's, Newfoundland, meet the expedition crew and board the ship that will take them to the Titanic wreck site. The  Polar Prince  was the support ship that transported the crew for this current mission.
• Day 2:  The ship continues out to the dive site in the North Atlantic Ocean. The expedition leader will go over safety information and dive logistics. The science team and content experts will also help divers prepare what they may discover on the dive.
• Day 3-7:  Diving begins depending on the sea conditions. Final dive checks take place before crew members board the five-person Titan submersible. Those not diving the first day "will be incorporated into other areas of dive ops — like driving the dingy, assisting the Expedition Manager, collecting media," the website said. For those onboard the Titan, the descent takes about two hours and crew members will assist the pilot "with coms and tracking, take notes for the science team about what you see outside of the viewport, watch a movie or eat lunch," it said. "Soon you will arrive at depth, and after some navigating across the seafloor and debris field, finally see what you’ve been waiting for: the RMS Titanic." An onboard content expert will point out key features of the wreck and animal life while exploring the wreck, it said. "Enjoy hours of exploring the wreck and debris field before making the two-hour ascent to the surface," the website said.
• Day 8:  The ship makes the 380-mile journey back to St. Johns.

Five more expeditions were planned for 2024, according to the archived version of the itinerary.

What's the difference between a submersible and a submarine?

A submersible, such as the missing Titan vessel, is a type of watercraft — but it has some key differences from the better-known submarine.

Unlike submarines, a submersible needs a mother ship to launch it. The Titan's support ship was the Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaking ship, according to the ship's co-owner Horizon Maritime.

A submarine can also stay underwater much longer, while submersibles have much fewer power reserves, according to OceanGate, the company operating the Titan expedition, in a webpage seen by CNN that is no longer available.

The Titan has 96 hours of life support capacity, and its dives down to the Titanic wreckage usually last 10 to 11 hours, according to the site — compared to submarines that can stay underwater for months.

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What we know about the 'catastrophic implosion' that killed five men aboard the Titanic submersible

After several days of searching in a remote area of the North Atlantic, the five people aboard a submersible near the Titanic wreck have been declared dead.

The cause of their deaths was a "catastrophic implosion of the vessel", according to US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger.

Here's what an implosion means, how it happens and whether the passengers could have felt it. 

How was the Titan sub found?

An uncrewed deep-sea robot deployed from a Canadian ship discovered the wreckage of the Titan submersible on Thursday morning.

Soon after the debris of the vessel was found, OceanGate Expeditions, the US-based company that operated the submersible, released a statement confirming the deaths of the five passengers. 

"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost," the company said. 

What did it find?

Five major fragments of the Titan were located in the debris field left from its disintegration.

This included the vessel's tail cone and two sections of the pressure hull , Coast Guard officials said.

"The debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle," Mauger said.

No mention was made of whether human remains were sighted.

Where was it found?

Wreckage of the Titan submersible was found 488 metres from the bow of the Titanic wreckage.

This was 4 kilometres below the surface.

The US Coast Guard believes the nature and location of the debris suggests a catastrophic implosion which would have killed all five people on board.

When did the sub implode?

The US Coast Guard said it was too soon to say when the implosion happened.

The Titan had been missing since June 18. 

He said it was not detected by sonar buoys used by search crews, which suggests it happened before they arrived.

One source says the implosion may have happened days ago.

A US Navy acoustic system detected an "anomaly" on Monday, a senior military official told The Associated Press. 

It found the anomaly to be "consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost". 

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.

The navy passed on the information to the coast guard, which continued its search because the navy did not consider the data to be definitive.

The navy's possible clue was not known publicly until Friday, when The Wall Street Journal first reported it.

What is an implosion?

Implosion is an explosion in reverse , according to Professor Stefano Brizzolara, the co-director of Virginia Tech Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics. 

"Imagine a cylinder: during an explosion, the charge placed in the centre ignites and causes the pressure at the centre to increase instantaneously," Professor Brizzolara told ABC News. 

Such intense pressure is what causes the  ejection of mass to move from the centre of the cylinder to the outside  at an "incredible speed".

"An implosion is the reverse of this," Professor Brizzolara said.

"The inside of the cylinder can practically be considered void, while the pressure of the wave that breaches the hull is 400 times larger.

"This causes a violent flow of water from outside of the cylinder to the inside, with incredible speed.

"We're talking water rushing in at a speed of the order of 1,000 kilometres per hour."

What made it 'catastrophic'?

"Catastrophic implosion" literally means breaking into pieces and small fragments , says Professor Brizzolara.

Here's where "the hull" comes in — it's the main body of a ship or vessel and the Titan's is made from  carbon fibre and titanium.

Carbon-reinforced plastic collapses "catastrophically", says Professor Brizzolara.

"This is because the material is not ductile like metal alloys and therefore it 'catastrophically' implodes."

For context, navy submarines use high-strength steel or titanium alloys, Professor Brizzolara says. 

"This is why current rules and regulations do not consider composite materials for underwater vehicles meant to operate at large depths," he said. 

How did the implosion happen? 

A flood or a failure of the pressure vessel would have likely caused the implosion, says submarine expert Eric Fusil from the University of Adelaide.

That kind of "catastrophic event" would have happened within 20 milliseconds , Professor Fusil told ABC News Breakfast this morning. 

The Titan's pressure hull was made of a combination of titanium and a composite material of carbon fibres, which he described as "very new".

"The titanium pressure vessel is very elastic — it can crush and then restore its initial shape," Professor Fusil explained.

"But the carbon fibres are completely different — it's something very stiff."

"We have those two opposite forces," he said. 

Professor Fusil said it's an "experimental technology" and it was too early to tell whether that design caused the issues. 

What does an implosion feel like?

The five passengers inside the Titan submersible might not have realised it was even happening , Professor Fusil says.

"They wouldn't have realised they were dying because they cannot process that information that quickly," he said.

Implosions can be similar to a balloon, says forensic engineer Bart Kemper. 

"When I take a needle and poke it into a balloon, once you break that balloon, it's gone," Mr Kemper told 7.30’s Sarah Ferguson.

"That's exactly the problem you have with a pressure vessel, and the fact that this is external pressure, not internal pressure, it doesn't matter.

"Once you lose integrity, with these kinds of pressures, it's gone," he said. 

In 2018, submarine experts had warned the company operating the Titan, OceanGate, that without industry oversight the submersible was exposing passengers to possible catastrophic failure.

One of those experts was Mr Kemper.

What about those 'banging noises'?

Underwater sounds described as "banging noises" by a Canadian surveillance vessel initially sparked hope for a possible rescue. 

But these underwater sounds heard on Tuesday and Wednesday were probably unrelated to the submersible, The Associated Press reports.

The sounds in the Titan search were picked up using devices called sonobuoys , which can be tossed out of aeroplanes to detect noises, to avoid interference with ship sounds, said Matt Dzieciuch, an ocean acoustics expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The ocean is a "noisy place," Dr Dzieciuch said.

There are many other potential sources of sound underwater, including from fish, other animals and of course human-made instruments, he explained.

Search teams heard the banging noises at 30-minute intervals , US Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick said at a press conference. 

But Mr Frederick went on to say analysis of the noises had been "inconclusive".

"With respect to the noises specifically, we don't know what they are, to be frank with you."

OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanic's decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

The company has not responded to additional questions about the Titan's voyage this week.

The Coast Guard will continue searching for more signs about what happened to the Titan.

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How Could This Have Happened?

Five people died in a submersible that was only loosely regulated and may not have been inspected for safety.

The dreadful saga of the missing Titanic submersible is finally drawing to a close. On Sunday, the vessel, called the Titan, was supposed to take five people on an hours-long, 12,500-foot-deep journey to the wreckage of the Titanic, which rests at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, less than two hours into the tour, the submersible lost contact with its support ship. At a press conference this afternoon, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that a remotely operated vehicle had encountered the debris of the Titan, which suggested that the passengers were killed in “a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”

The debris of the submersible was discovered on the seafloor, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. For days, rescue workers had operated on the hopeful assumption that the submersible might still be intact, and that its occupants could be alive, even as their oxygen reserves began to run out. The news brings a difficult end to days of frenzied search-and-rescue efforts involving military and research vessels from multiple countries. It also underscores an important question that became more salient with each minute of the search: How, exactly, could this have happened?

In the days since the Titan lost contact with the outside world, reporters have uncovered many details about the submersible and its operator, OceanGate, a research-and-tourism company that has offered such Titanic excursions since 2021. David Pogue, a CBS journalist who traveled on the submersible last year, called the sub “janky” for its scraped-together parts, such as construction pipes serving as ballast. It had no fancy control panels, only a single button that initiates the descent, like pressing “Down” on an elevator, and was piloted using a $30 game controller. The Washington Post ’s Gene Park pointed out that such controllers are actually not so unusual for certain kinds of vehicles, even those used by the U.S. military—but the Titan’s controller appears to have been an older model, and it relied on a good Bluetooth connection, which is not the case for military craft.

And, most concerning of all, it is not clear whether the Titan was inspected for safety by outside experts. In 2018, dozens of industry experts warned OceanGate that if the company didn’t put the Titan through an independent safety assessment, its Titanic expeditions could face potentially “catastrophic” problems. Even OceanGate’s own director of marine operations was at the time worried about “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths,” The New York Times reported this week. At least one previous dive had problems too: According to Pogue , a Titan expedition last year got lost on the seafloor for about five hours.

From the May 2004 issue: The sinking of the Estonia

Throughout it all, OceanGate and its CEO, Stockton Rush—who was among the Titan’s lost passengers—declared that innovation was more important than critics’ concerns. In a 2019 blog post , the company said it didn’t want to get the Titan certified for safety standards in part because “bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.” In interviews with Pogue, Rush said , “I think I can do this just as safely while breaking the rules” and “at some point, safety is just pure waste.” There’s no evidence that the Titan was subjected to strict regulation , either. As New York magazine has reported, submersibles are not subject to international maritime law. The United States has its own rules, but they didn’t technically apply, because the Titan launched from a Canadian ship in international waters.

(OceanGate did not respond to a request for comment about Rush’s remarks or about safety concerns regarding the Titan, nor did the company immediately respond to a request for comment about today’s announcement from the Coast Guard.)

Rush repeatedly hyped the Titan’s creative design, including a system that he said could monitor the health of its hull in real time. He and other investors spent tens of millions of dollars on OceanGate, including developing that hull, which needed to withstand the extreme pressures at the bottom of the ocean. Rush asked NASA for help, and the agency agreed , under an arrangement that allows the space agency to work with outside organizations on cutting-edge research. But NASA only “consulted on materials and manufacturing processes for the submersible,” an agency spokesperson said this week, and “did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate.”

Rush has said that he drew inspiration for his deep-sea adventures from the growing space-tourism industry, which has recently begun offering short jaunts beyond Earth’s atmosphere, as well as journeys to the International Space Station. There are certainly parallels between a submersible at sea and a capsule in space: Help is far away, and the environment is terrifyingly hostile. The bottom of the sea, in this case, seems even more isolated and perilous ; radio transmissions can travel through space for many light-years, but they cannot travel underwater.

Read: The Titanic sub and the draw of extreme tourism

The big difference is that space-tourism companies publicly make a big deal out of the safety measures of their craft. What they are doing privately is a different question; in 2021, for example, a Blue Origin whistleblower claimed that the company had prioritized speed over safety. (Blue Origin responded to the claims, saying its rocket was “the safest space vehicle ever designed or built.”) But those companies know that their customers have seen pictures and footage of deadly shuttle disasters, and so take pains to reassure them, even as they ask them to sign waivers that likely outline their own brand of danger in great detail. In comparison, OceanGate’s public approach to safety seems almost cavalier, less like modern-day space tourism and more reminiscent of the rushed and occasionally ramshackle efforts of the space race.

Coast Guard officials said that they are still “focused on documenting the scene” with remotely operated equipment. They don’t yet know what caused the Titan to implode, or what regulations might have prevented the disaster. The search-and-rescue effort has now become a gruesome investigation, delving into yet another mystery in a place already steeped in it.