Eerie new footage showing a deep-sea salvage mission to retrieve the wreckage of the doomed Titan submersible has been released in an inquiry into the disaster.
The video, released by the Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) late Monday, shows a remotely operated vehicle attaching thick yellow ropes and equipment to what appears to be the end cap of the sunken vessel on June 26 last year.
The four-minute clip is one of many videos and images that have been released by the MBI in recent days as part of the Coast Guard’s ongoing public hearing into how last year’s catastrophe unfolded.
During testimony today, an OceanGate employee hit back at accusations that the company was desperate to complete the dives in what would prove to be an unsafe vessel after it imploded, killing all five people on board.
One of the top officials with the company, Amber Bay, OceanGate’s former director of administration, pushed back at a question from a Coast Guard investigator about whether OceanGate felt this ‘desperation’ because of the high price tag.
‘Not a desperation, there definitely was an urgency to delivery on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal,’ she said.
Newly released footage of a salvage mission of the Titan sub released by the Marine Board of Investigation shows a remote controlled vehicle picking up debris of the sunken vessel
Two of the robot’s arms could be seen maneuvering the retrieval equipment around the wreckage site
She insisted the company would not ‘conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need.’
Her remarks came after the new clip was released on Monday, showing the moment a robotic submersible worked to retrieve the wreckage of the Titan.
An aerial view later showed a dusty cloud erupting on the ocean floor as the vehicle lifted off the sea bed around 2.5miles below the surface of the North Atlantic ocean.
On Tuesday, several other witnesses characterized those who paid $250,000 to participate in OceanGate voyages to the Titanic as passengers, but Bay described them more as explorers who were invited to take an active role in the missions.
‘These were the people we were looking for. Explorers. Adventurers,’ Bay added.
On June 18, 2023, the Titan sub’s expedition to view the sunken Titanic ended in tragedy after the submersible lost contact with its support vessel, Polar Prince, around an hour and 45 minutes into a two-and-a-half hour descent.
One of the last messages from the crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, ‘all good here,’ according to a visual re-creation presented earlier in the hearing.
The loss of contact sparked an international manhunt to track down the missing vessel which had plunged 12,400ft – more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon – under the North Atlantic ocean.
The US Coast Guard announced the sub had between 70 and 96 hours left before it ran out of oxygen, while a chilling banging noise coming from the vessel gave people hope that the five people on board might simply be trapped underwater.
But tragically, all five – British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19; British businessman Hamish Harding, 58; former French navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77; and co-founder of the sub owner’s company OceanGate Stockton Rushton, 61 – died when the Titan submersible suddenly imploded.
Guillermo Sohnlein, a co-founder of OceanGate, told the Monday hearing that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.
He also said that he hopes the disaster does not ruin the future of such missions.
The clip shows a remotely operated vehicle attaching ropes and equipment to what appears to be the end cap of the sunken vessel
The video, released late Monday, captured the high-tech efforts that went into salvaging debris from the Titan submersible wreck
The Titan disappeared on June 18, 2023. There were five people inside when it imploded
Guillermo Sohnlein told a Coast Guard panel Monday that he can’t say what exactly led to the submersible implosiond in June 2023
‘This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,’ said Sohnlein, who had left the company before the Titan disaster.
He added that he had the opportunity to dive in Titan ‘many times’ and he declined.
Sohnlein also said when Rushton reached a point when it was ‘time to put a human in there,’ he wanted to do it himself.
Rushton felt Titan was his design and said ‘if anything happens, I want it to impact me,’ Sohnlein said.
Speaking to the Coast Guard panel, he revealed the sad truth that the answers to what really went wrong on the Titanic excursion may never be known.
‘I don’t know what happened. I don’t know who made what decision when and based on what information,’ he said.
‘And honestly, I don’t know if any of us will ever know this, despite all of your team’s investigative efforts.’
Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rushton and felt the company was committed only to making money.
‘The whole idea behind the company was to make money,’ Lochridge testified.
‘There was very little in the way of science.
On January 19, during the fourth day of the hearing, the U.S. Coast Guard released a redacted transcript between Rushton and Lochridge from January 19, 2018 as part of their high level investigation into the cause of the fatal implosion.
The two men were discussing a quality inspect report on the sub’s design when the exchange became heated and Rushton defended the vessel’s safety, reported BBC.
‘I have no desire to die, and I’m not going to die. I’m not dying. No one is dying under my watch – period,’ Rushton said in the haunting audio.
The US Coast Guard released mapped locations of the Titan submersible debris on the seafloor as an exhibit during the hearing
The images pinpoint the locations of the submersible wreck scattered across the sea bed of the North Atlantic Ocean
All five people on board the vessel were killed in the tragedy, including OceanGate’s founder Stockton Rush (top-right), three Brits including adventurer Hamish Harding (top left) and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood (bottom right), as well as Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet (bottom-left)
Renata Rojas, a former OceanGate mission specialist, broke down in tears as she gave her testimony to the Coast Guard during day four of the hearing on September 19
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing on Monday that the submersible had not been independently reviewed – as is standard practice – before its descent.
The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.
It comes after a former OceanGate mission specialist broke down in tears last week before recounting her agonising wait for the doomed Titan submersible to resurface.
New York City-based banker Renata Rojas delivered harrowing testimony about the doomed mission on the fourth day of a public hearing into tragedy, on September 19.
She described her role in helping the launch last June and said that all on board understood the risks involved in their dive deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean to see the wreck of the Titanic.
‘This was never sold as a Disney ride,’ she said. ‘It was an expedition that … things happen and you have to adapt to change.’
Another witness – OceanGate’s scientific director – said that the submersible had malfunctioned just three days before the tragedy, noting that he did not know whether it had been checked over before its fateful voyage.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion and has said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and other investigations since they began.