By Aaron Miller-
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board is launching an investigation after the implosion of the Titan submersible left all five passengers dead.
A separate probe in the U.S will be launched involving the American counterpart and US Coast Guard.
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Ocean gate is under criticism for the disaster, after but it opted against seeking certification, and operating as an experimental vessel after it emerged that other experts in the industry, and a whistleblowing employee raised alarms in 201.
A wide ranging international search effort concluded on Thursday, after debris from the Titan was found about 1,600 feet from the historic wreckage of the Titanic. Military experts found the debris was consistent with the disastrous loss of the small vessel’s pressure chamber, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger announced.
Tributes were paid to the late billionaire, Hamish Harding, who would have turned 59 on Saturday, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, and Stockton Rush, 61.
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Suleman had apparently been terrified of joining the group on the trip, but eventually yielded to persuasion to go as part of a father’s day gift. Had he followed his instinct, he would have escaped the ill fated tragedy.
John Mauger of the US First Coast Guard District said investigators would attempt to find out what had happened to Titan. “I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now,” Mauger said, adding that it was a “complex case” that happened in a remote part of the ocean and involved people from several different countries.
The US Navy has said it had detected an “anomaly” likely to have been the fatal implosion of the Titan, while the film director James Cameron has claimed his deep-sea exploration sources detected a “loud bang” that could have marked the moment when those on board lost their lives.
According to the New York Times, the acoustic data came from a secret network of underwater sensors designed to track hostile submarines.
It found an anomaly “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost”, according to a statement. The navy, which did not consider the information to be definitive, passed it on to the coastguard as it continued its search for the missing men.
Cameron – who has made 33 dives himself to the Titanic wreck and claims to have spent “more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day” – said he had known the submersible was lost from the start of the four-day search. He also said his sources had reported similar information about the Titan’s fate.
“We got confirmation within an hour that there had been a loud bang at the same time that the sub comms were lost,” the director told Reuters. “A loud bang on the hydrophone. Loss of transponder. Loss of comms. I knew what happened. The sub imploded.”
Cameron became a deep-sea explorer in the 1990s while researching and making his Oscar-winning blockbuster Titanic, and is part owner of Triton Submarines, which makes submersibles for research and tourism.
He said he told colleagues in an email on Monday: “We’ve lost some friends,” and: “it’s on the bottom in pieces right now.”
After the deaths of those onboard the Titan were announced, Cameron expressed regret for not sounding the alarm earlier, adding that he had been sceptical when he heard OceanGate was making a deep-sea submersible with a composite carbonfibre and titanium hull.
“I thought it was a horrible idea. I wish I’d spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face,” Cameron told Reuters.
The fact adequate measures were not taken to give ensure sensible safeguards in place before such a mission was undertaken will form a key part of the probe into the disastrous venture.
The cause of the Titan’s implosion has not been determined, but Cameron said he presumed the critics were correct in warning that a carbonfibre and titanium hull would enable delamination and microscopic water ingress, leading to progressive failure over time.
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