First Photo of Titan Sub Wreckage on Ocean Floor Released After Final Texts Revealed All Was ‘Good’

Authorities have released the first photo of the OceanGate Titan submarine wreckage following the June 2023 tragedy where five passengers were killed in an implosion.

U.S. Coast Guard officials presented the image, which shows the submersible’s tail cone embedded into the ocean floor, during a multiday hearing about the tragedy on Monday, September 16. The photo was collected by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). This image led to “conclusive evidence of a catastrophic loss” of the Titan and its passengers, officials said, according to People.

The ROV, called the Pelagic Research Services 6000, found the wreckage and other debris in an extensive search conducted on June 22, 2023, four days after the sub began its voyage and subsequently lost contact with the surface.

Deep sea explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, OceanGate cofounder Stockton Rush, British businessman Hamish Hardin, Pakistani businessman and philanthropist Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleiman, boarded the Titan on June 18, 2023, and embarked on a voyage to see the Titanic wreck at around 9:20 a.m.

The Titan, which needed its mothership, the Polar Prince, to guide it back to the surface once the voyage was complete, lost contact with the surface about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.

The final messages between the Titan and the Polar Prince were shared during Monday’s public hearing, which is being conducted by The Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation (MBI). After not hearing from the submersible for 15 minutes, someone aboard the Polar Prince told Nargeolet, who was believed to be in charge of communications, “I need better comms from you.”

He responded, “Yes,” and said they had “lost system oand [sic] chat settings.”

When asked by the surface crew if they saw the Polar Prince on their display, Nargeolet replied, “yes” and, “all good here.”

OceanGate, a privately owned company that provided crewed submersibles for tourism, industry, research and exploration, contacted the Coast Guard for a search after the loss of contact. The Coast Guard announced on June 22 that an ROV had found debris that was “consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber. Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families.”

The Titan did not make it to the Titanic wreck, as the submersible’s tail cone was found “approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said at the time.

Wreckage from the implosion was recovered and transported to St. John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, one week later. The Coast Guard announced in a press release on June 28 that they had discovered “presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered within the wreckage at the site of the incident.”

OceanGate suspended all further operations on July 6, 2023.

The MBI’s hearing is being held to present the facts of the investigation and ensure that a similar incident is prevented in the future.

“Over the past 15 months, our team has worked continuously in close coordination with multiple federal agencies, international partners and industry experts to uncover the facts surrounding this incident,” Jason Neubauer, the chair of the MBI, said in a press conference Sunday, September 15.

Neubauer continued, “The upcoming hearings will allow us to present our findings and hear directly from key witnesses and subject matter experts in a transparent forum. [The proceedings] are a critical step in our mission to understand the contributing factors that led to the incident and, even more importantly, the actions needed to prevent a similar occurrence.”