[Update: Now what? OceanGate sub tragedy sets off a torrent of questions without answers]
The search for an OceanGate submersible that went out of contact during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic has widened to take in an area of the North Atlantic Ocean that’s the size of the state of Massachusetts.
Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate confirmed in an email that the company’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, is “aboard the submersible as a member of the crew.” Other members of the five-person crew are veteran Titanic explorer PH Nargeolet; Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; and Hamish Harding, a British aviation executive and adventurer.
Rush served as the pilot of the Titan submersible for most of its dives over the past two years — but Bloomberg News cited reports claiming that Nargeolet was the pilot for the dive that began Sunday morning.
OceanGate Expeditions’ mission control ship, the Polar Prince, lost contact with the submersible about an hour and 45 minutes into Sunday’s dive. The last “ping” from Titan reportedly came from an area just above the Titanic wreck, but there’s a chance the sub drifted elsewhere in the depths.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which is leading the search, said in a tweet that 10,000 square miles of ocean — just a little less than Massachusetts’ surface area — had been surveyed as of this morning, roughly 24 hours since the search began.
Search teams are looking for signs of the sub with the aid of surface ships including the Polar Prince and the Deep Energy, plus Coast Guard C-130 planes and Canadian P-3 Aurora and P-8 Poseidon aircraft. The P-8 is equipped with an underwater sonar detection system, and sonar buoys are also being deployed in the area.
“To date, those search efforts have not yielded any results,” Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said today during a news briefing.
Frederick said remotely operated vehicles were being brought to the scene for underwater deployment as part of a “full-court press” to look for the submersible. If the sub is located, a U.S.-Canadian task force “will look at the next course of action,” including rescue attempts, he said.
“This operation is our top priority right now,” Frederick said.
OceanGate Expeditions says the submersible is designed to provide life support for up to 96 hours, or four days — a time frame that would run out on Thursday.
OceanGate began conducting dives to the Titanic, arguably the world’s best-known shipwreck, in 2021. Its Titan submersible was constructed from carbon composite and titanium to endure the high-pressure environment that exists more than 12,500 feet beneath the ocean surface, in the vicinity of the wreck.
The company’s routine involves picking up crew members at St. John’s, Newfoundland, and bringing them to the dive site about 400 miles offshore. Crew members take turns, five at a time, for attempts to get to the wreck on the ocean floor. The crew for each dive includes a pilot, at least one subject expert, and mission specialists who have paid as much as $250,000 to be part of the adventure.
Who’s on the crew
During last year’s GeekWire Summit, Rush said including paying passengers on the crew was an essential part of OceanGate’s business model. “There were researchers who wanted to go in the ocean … but what was the model?” Rush said. “Well, there are folks who want to do high-end adventure tourism. People who were spending $100,000 to climb Everest or go to Antarctica. Maybe we could merge the two.”
Harding and the father-and-son Dawoods fit the model.
Harding, the chairman of British-based Action Aviation, previously participated in a record-setting dive to Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean and a suborbital spaceflight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship.
“We look forward to welcoming him home,” Action Aviation said in a statement.
Shahzada Dawood is the vice chairman of Engro, a Pakistani conglomerate with investments in energy, agriculture, petrochemicals and telecommunications. His family ranks among Pakistan’s richest families. He’s an adviser to Prince’s Trust International in Britain as well as a member of the board of trustees for the SETI Institute. Dawood’s son, Suleman, is said to be 19 years old.
“We, at Engro, remain in prayer for their swift and safe return,” Engro said in a tweet.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet is a French maritime expert who has been on more than 35 dives to the Titanic shipwreck over the course of the past 36 years. Last year, he participated in an OceanGate dive that explored a volcanic ridge near the wreck.
“It was amazing to explore this area and find this fascinating volcanic formation teeming with so much life,” he said afterward. The undersea formation is now known as the Nargeolet-Fanning Ridge.
Controversy over classing
The pressurized Titan submersible has a proprietary real-time hull monitoring system that’s designed to provide the pilot with advance warning in case structural stresses exceed specified limits. However, Titan did not go through the full procedure for verifying compliance with the shipping industry’s detailed standards, known as “classing.”
In a 2019 blog post, OceanGate defended that decision.
“Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” the company said. “For example, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic all rely on experienced inside experts to oversee the daily operations, testing and validation versus bringing in outsiders who need to first be educated before being qualified to ‘validate’ any innovations.”
The New York Times reported that leaders in the submersible vehicle industry sent a letter to Rush in 2018 warning that OceanGate’s “current ‘experimental’ approach” could result in problems ranging “from minor to catastrophic.”
Also in 2018, an OceanGate employee named David Lochridge alleged in court documents that he was fired as part of an effort “to avoid addressing the safety and quality control issues” surrounding the company’s submersible development program. Lochridge’s counterclaim came in response to a suit that OceanGate filed against him, alleging the disclosure of confidential information about Titan.
The case, brought to light by The New Republic and Insider, was settled a few months after the court filings.
OceanGate followed up on at least one of Lochridge’s concerns: By early 2020, stress testing had revealed that Titan’s carbon composite hull could not be rated to handle the pressure at the depth of the Titanic wreck, and the hull was rebuilt.
