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The debris found Thursday near the Titanic wreckage site is from the submersible that had been missing for four days, the Coast Guard said in an afternoon news briefing, making it clear the five people on board had died.
“The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District. The debris was found at the bottom of the sea floor about 1,600 feet from the Titanic wreckage, he said, adding that the victims’ families have been notified.
The 22-foot vessel was on a dive to the site of the Titanic when it lost contact with its support ship Sunday.
OceanGate, the company that operated the Titan submersible – and whose CEO, Stockton Rush, piloted the watercraft – issued a statement saying the travelers “have sadly been lost.”
The other four people believed to have perished were Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, British adventurer Hamish Harding and French deep-sea explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Mauger said the debris was found roughly 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor, and that it was too early to tell when the Titan imploded. The Coast Guard will continue investigating with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
Paul Hankins, the U.S. Navy director of salvage operations and ocean engineering, said the debris found indicated a “catastrophic event.” He and Mauger said it included a tail cone, the end bell of the pressure hull and the aft end bell, which according to Hankins, “basically comprise the totality of that pressure vessel.”
Debris field discovered early Thursday
Search and rescue crews remotely operating an underwater vehicle had discovered debris near the Titanic earlier Thursday, the day the submersible was expected to run out of oxygen.
The debris was found by an ROV associated with the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic that reached the sea floor and began searching for the submersible early Thursday, according to the Coast Guard.
The complex search and rescue mission has attracted international attention and involved personnel from the U.S., Canada, France and the United Kingdom. Another ROV, associated with the French vessel L’Atalante, also deployed Thursday, the Coast Guard said.
The accelerating search efforts come as an updated prediction by the Coast Guard said the Titan submersible was likely to run out of oxygen roughly around 7 a.m. ET Thursday. It initially had 96 hours of oxygen for a crew of five. Experts have noted that the estimates are imprecise. In the end, running out of oxygen might not have been the biggest problem.
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Inside the underwater vessel:Reporter who rode Titanic submersible tells USA TODAY about ‘less sophisticated’ parts
Wife of OceanGate CEO descended from Titanic victims
The wife of OceanGate’s CEO is descended from victims of the Titanic wreck of 1912, geneological records suggest.
Wendy Rush, the wife of Stockton Rush, is the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, The New York Times first reported. USA TODAY confirmed the tie through geneological records online.
The couple was last seen together on the deck of the Titanic holding hands as it sank, according to the U.K. government’s National Archives. Rush’s great-grandmother was their daughter Minnie, who married Richard Weil, said Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society, a non-profit that preserves information relating to the Straus Family.
Rush works as OceanGate’s director of communications and has participated in three past OceanGate journeys to the Titanic site, according to her LinkedIn page.
Pakistani teen is student in Scotland
Suleman Dawood, the Pakistani 19-year-old aboard the vessel, is a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, the university confirmed Thursday. He just completed his first year in the business school there.
“We are deeply concerned about Suleman, 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 university said.
Deep ocean salvage system arrives for search
Rescue crews on Thursday had faced wind gusts up to 19 mph and ocean swells up to 5 feet, with an air temperature of 50 F, according to the Coast Guard.
The U.S. Navy said Wednesday afternoon that a special deep-water salvage system capable of hoisting up to 60,000 pounds had reached St. John’s, Canada, and could be used to lift the Titan to the surface, though it may not be ready for another 24 hours. The Titan weighs 23,000 pounds, according to the OceanGate website.
Submersible previously had battery issues
At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Virginia.
“On the first dive to the Titanic, the submersible encountered a battery issue and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform,” one filing says. “In the high sea state, the submersible sustained modest damage to its externalcomponents and OceanGate decided to cancel the second mission for repairs and operational enhancements.”
Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman from Germany, took a dive to the site two years ago. “Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” Loibl told the Associated Press. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick. The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10.5 hours, he said.
Underwater noises heard for two days
Aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area on Tuesday and Wednesday, prompting officials to redirect rescue efforts, said Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator, in a news conference Wednesday. Navy acoustic analysts were studying the sounds, he said.
“We don’t know what they are,” Frederick said. “The good news is, we’re searching in the area where the noises were detected.” The search net covers a surface area roughly two times the size of Connecticut and 2.5 miles deep, he said.
At the press conference Wednesday, Carl Hartsfield, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the sounds have been described as “banging noises.” He cautioned against jumping to conclusions and said sounds that aren’t man-made may sound man-made to the untrained ear.
Nikolas Xiros, a professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of New Orleans, told USA TODAY he believed there was a good chance the banging noises came from the submersible. That could mean people on board were trying to communicate.
Missing Titanic submersible:Maps, graphics show last location, depth and design
Who is on the passenger list of the submersible?
These are the passengers on the submersible:
- Stockton Rush, 61, CEO of OceanGate, who co-founded the company in 2009.
- Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 73, a French maritime explorer and director of the Underwater Research Program at Premier Exhibitions, RMS Titanic Inc., the only company with exclusive rights to recover the artifacts from the Titanic wreck.
- Hamish Harding, 58, a British explorer, private jet dealer and chairman of Action Aviation, a global sales company in business aviation.
- Shahzada Dawood, 48, a member of one of Pakistan’s most prominent families.
- Suleman Dawood, son of Shahzada Dawood.
— Isabelle Butera, USA TODAY
Who pays the cost for Coast Guard rescues?
The cost of the search and rescue mission is likely in the millions of dollars — and will fall to taxpayers, said Chris Boyer, the executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, a non-profit education, training and advocacy group.
He said the Coast Guard doesn’t charge people for search and rescue. “That’s their job,” he said, noting fear of costs could deter people from seeking life-saving help.
While some adventure expeditions require patrons to take out insurance policies, few would come close to covering likely the costs of the current rescue mission, he said. High-risk adventures have long fueled complex debates about risk and rescue, he said.
“I think it’s going to become a larger issue for us. Because it’s not just under the water. We now have private spaceships flying private astronauts into space,” he said. “What happens when that private spaceship can’t come back home?”
— Chris Kenning, USA TODAY
What does it look like inside the missing submersible?
The Titan submersible is about 8 feet high, 9 feet wide and 22 feet long, according to the OceanGate website. It is designed to reach about 13,000 feet deep and travels at 3 knots, the company says. The vessel has a five-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull and four 10-horsepower electric thrusters, according to court filings.
Several exterior cameras provide a live view of the outside, and passengers can access the camera views on a large digital display or on a hand-held tablet, according to court filings. Images posted to the website show people seated on the floor in the small, open space with their legs crossed.
Science writer and CBS correspondent David Pogue, who boarded the submersible for a report that aired in November, told USA TODAY he was concerned about the vessel’s safety.
“There were parts of it that seemed to me to be less sophisticated than I was guessing. You drive it with a PlayStation video controller … some of the ballasts are old, rusty construction pipes,” Pogue said. “There were certain things that looked like cut corners.”
Contributing: Kayla Jimenez, Dinah Pulver and Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
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