U.S. Coast Guard Releases First Video of Sub Titan's Wreckage

The U.S. Coast Guard has released the first public video of the wreckage of the submersible Titan, which imploded and sank to the bottom during a dive at the wreck site of the Titanic in 2023. Five died in the implosion, making it the first fatal accident in half a century in a deep sea submersible. 

The newly-released video shows the stern tail section of the submersible, along with what appears to be a piece of carbon fiber from the pressurized passenger compartment's hull. The Coast Guard believes that the craft's experimental carbon hull imploded rapidly, with little or no warning.

The video was released to the public as part of the USCG Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) hearings on the loss of the Titan. An MBI is the service's most serious form of inquiry, and involves months of research followed by weeks of public testimony from stakeholders. 

Deep sea subs are technically demanding to build and operate, and they are normally the province of government-backed organizations, but operator OceanGate hoped to make ultra-deep dives accessible to a larger audience. By keeping costs down, it hoped to market "scientific" dive expeditions to high-net-worth individuals at prices in the range of $20-35,000 per person. 

Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, the MBI panel interviewed four employees of OceanGate about the design, construction and operation of the submersible, including engineering practices and company culture. Much of the discussion centered on the decisions of co-founder and CEO Richard Stockton Rush III, who opted not to pursue classification or a Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection (COI). These processes would have imposed a structured review to ensure that the one-of-a-kind craft was ready to operate.

Rush died in the implosion, but nine months before the disaster, he acknowledged that OceanGate was pushing the envelope with its carbon fiber submersible hull. "When you're outside the box, it's hard to tell how really far outside the box you are. And we were really pretty far out there," he told a conference audience in October 2022.