2023 Titan submersible incident

On 18 June 2023, Titan, a submersible operated by OceanGate, an American tourism and expeditions company, imploded during its descent in the North Atlantic Ocean, about 320 nautical miles (590 km) off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The submersible, carrying five people, was part of an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic. Communication with Titan was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive, and authorities were alerted when it failed to resurface at the scheduled time later that day.

After a search lasting nearly 80 hours, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) discovered a debris field containing parts of Titan, about 500 metres (1,600 ft) from the bow of the Titanic. The search area was informed by the United States Navy’s (USN) sonar detection of an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion around the time communications with the submersible ceased, suggesting the pressure hull had imploded while Titan was descending, resulting in the instantaneous deaths of all five occupants.

 Numerous industry experts had raised concerns about the safety of the vessel. OceanGate executives, including its CEO Stockton Rush (one of the fatalities in the implosion), had not sought certification for Titan, arguing that excessive safety protocols hindered innovation.

OceanGate

Main article: OceanGate

OceanGate is a private company, founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein. Since 2010, it has transported paying customers in leased commercial submersibles off the coast of California, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Atlantic Ocean.^[5] The company is based in Everett, Washington, U.S.^[6]

Rush realised that visiting shipwreck sites was a way to get media attention, and in 2016 the company transported customers to a shipwreck for the first time, using their submersible Cyclops 1 to visit the Andrea Doria wreck site. In 2019, Rush told Smithsonian magazine "There's only one wreck that everyone knows ... If you ask people to name something underwater, it's going to be sharks, whales, Titanic".^[

Expeditions to the Titanic

Titan made its first dive to the Titanic in July 2021.^[ In total, OceanGate undertook six dives to the Titanic in 2021 and seven in 2022.

Each dive typically had a pilot, a guide and three paying passengers on board. Once inside the submersible, the hatch would be bolted shut and could only be reopened from the outside.^[ The descent from the surface to the Titanic typically took two hours,^] with the full dive taking about eight hours.^[31] Throughout the journey, the submersible was expected to emit a safety ping every 15 minutes to be monitored by the above-water crew.^[9] The vessel and surface crew were also able to communicate via short text messages.^[34]

Customers who travelled to the Titanic with OceanGate, referred to as "mission specialists" by the company,^[35] paid US$250,000 each for the eight-day expedition.

OceanGate intended to conduct multiple expeditions to the Titanic in 2023, but because of poor weather in Newfoundland, the June expedition in which the Titan was destroyed was the only one the company had launched that year.^[31][33]