Five people aboard Titan submersible are dead, US Coast Guard says

A crew member sits aboard a Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules airplane as it flies about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass., during the search for the 21-foot submersible Titan, June 21, 2023. [US Coast Guard via VOA]

Authorities were hoping underwater sounds would help narrow their search. Coast Guard officials said underwater noises were detected in the search area Tuesday and Wednesday.

Retired Navy Captain Carl Hartsfield, now the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, said the sounds detected that were described as "banging noises," but he warned that search crews "have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential manmade sources other than the Titan."

The report of sounds was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to bang on their submersible's hull to be detected by sonar.

But Jamie Pringle, an expert in Forensic Geosciences at Keele University, in England, said even if the noises were from the submersible, "the lack of oxygen is key now; even if they find it, they still need to get to the surface and unbolt it."

By Thursday morning, hope was running out that anyone on board the vessel would be found alive.

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 Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.

But newly uncovered allegations suggest there had been significant warnings made about vessel safety during the submersible's development.

One of the company's first customers characterized a dive he made to the site two years ago as a "kamikaze operation."

"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," said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. "You can't be claustrophobic."

During the 2-1/2-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 1/2 hours.

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.

Nick Rotker, who leads underwater research for the nonprofit research and development company MITRE, said the difficulty in searching for the Titan has underscored the U.S.'s need for more underwater robots and remotely operated underwater vehicles.