U.S. Coast Guard leads Titan submersible recovery operation

we start with the latest on the recovery operation of the Titan submersible and the potential ramifications for its owner Ocean Gate satellite images show some of the international resources that rush to the search area about 700 kilometers off St John's nine vessels remained in the area as of late yesterday the costly effort included assets and Personnel from Canada the U.S France and Britain some are staying on to continue mapping the debris field about 500 meters away from the Titanic others are returning to base it's unclear who if anyone will launch an inquiry into what went wrong that's because Ocean Gate while based in the U.S operated in international waters where no Coast Guard has jurisdiction Travis danrag has more on the recovery operation from St John's the hull of the Titan basically was strewn into two major debris Fields now they did find five major parts of that Hull including the nose section and also the back section I want to show you some exclusive photos that CBC News has just obtained of the Titan on Sunday being towed out of St John's Harbor that's of course what it left here to go to the North Atlantic to go to the site where the Titanic was and then uh then go explore that area with those five passengers on board certainly there are a lot of questions right now when it comes to the timeline of when this catastrophic event happened U.S media reporting that Navy sources are saying that their underwater sonar detected some kind of implosion likely on Sunday so that would have been during that descent or when the The Vessel was trying to come up because there are different theories now as to whether or not that catastrophic event happened while it was going going down or when it was trying to come back up so certainly as I said a lot of questions right now a lot of the military assets coming back to Port those military aircraft going back to their bases as well but there will be some assets that still stay out and try to get some more of that wreckage for the investigation the company is facing a lot of criticism right now for for this Mission and Ocean Gate faced a lot of criticism for the construction of Titan and for what you know a lot of Industry experts said was experimental construction uh for for years now back to 2018 when a lot of Industry experts put out a letter specifically to Stockton Rush saying that they were concerned that there could be some sort of minor uh event or catastrophic event here as well now there as I said are a number of theories when it comes to exactly what happened James Cameron who directed the famous movie Titanic he talked a little to Anderson Cooper last night about what he things happened the only way for the ship to know that they had dropped their Ascent weights which would be an emergency abort as if they had called that in that they were they were ascending so I I believe now that they had some warning that they heard some acoustic signature of the the hall beginning to delaminate I actually believe they heard it with their ears not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives and that's quite a horrifying Prospect so that part of a wide-ranging interview that the director did with CNN's Anderson Cooper last night Cooper is here in St John's and uh you know I talked to him about the chill that this has possibly put on deep sea exploration and a conversation that he had with James Cameron as well here's what he said the craft he designed uh was by his own specifications it didn't go through the traditional Maritime safety checks but he said the difference is he would never have taken passengers on board the craft that he himself designed that he was willing to take that risk so I think there's going to be increasing questions about whether it was right for this company to bring passengers aboard an experimental craft that had not gone through Maritime safety protocols that that many in the industry was urging this company to to put this craft through so the search for wreckage continues right now the search for answers does as well likely when it comes to the bodies though the family will not have closure on that because you know there are many reports that the bodies will likely never be found because of the conditions of that catastrophic event because of the depths that they were in as well but certainly you know this investigation it will likely take months even years before we get answers and there may not be answers to a lot of these major questions that are outstanding that's cbc's Travis denrash in St John's there are still so many questions about what happened to the Titan submersible and its safety record and how it was allowed to take passengers to the ocean floor so for more on that I want to bring in Sal mercogliano he is a maritime historian at Campbell University in North Carolina Welcome to the program sir thank you for having me so just maybe explain to viewers how the Titan was different it's funny I get so many different questions from people saying well other people have gone down in submersibles most submersibles that operate in the Deep area are largely spherical objects built out of one material steel titanium the difference with Titan was it was built out of two different materials and it wasn't a sphere but actually more like a cone or a tube shaped the end caps were made of titanium but the Center Hull the round tube part where the passengers Road was out of this carbon fiber material and you have to join those two materials together and the different shape and because of the composite material is what made this such an experimental craft then why why use different materials if the other materials had worked in the past the other materials create a spherical object in which you can put people in but you can't put that many people into a sphere largely because this craft was designed to bring passengers down to the Titanic you needed a larger object so you either have to build a much larger sphere or you come up with this kind of tubular shape that they used so it it had gone down to the Titanic in the past so this is what happened this time why this massive tragedy well this is where the issue comes up about classification of this craft the craft had been used since 2021 this is their third season in operation and what a classification Society does it's a third party entity that inspects your craft to ensure that the integrity and all the Machinery is maintaining they have a kind of a schedule that's in place for Hull monitoring and again because of this radically new design and the use of new material the owner the CEO of the company basically askewed the use of a classification Society because he argued it would take too long for them to catch up to his technology essentially broke regulations he did well this is where we get into this gray area because you're operating in international waters beyond the 12 mile limits of Canada this is international waters so that he did not break any rules or regulations Now understand the Deep submergence industry is a well-maintained industry this is the first major incident since it started in 1960 there's been no loss at Sea until this happened so if there is this sort of uh space that you know he didn't break regulations how does that Gap close well I think you actually have to go back to of all things the Titanic sinking which sank in 1912 and then two years later in London you have the the convention what's known as the safety of Life at Sea convention the soulless convention and that mandated requirements for lifeboats and life jackets and distressed rockets and 24-hour monitoring so that all ships had to meet a international standard and that was required not just by the flags that were flown from the ships but from the uh the ports they sailed into it gave them authority to inspect those vessels and I think one of the things you're going to see here is changes in laws particularly in Canada since this Expedition originated in Canada came off a Canadian vessel about submersible laws so if you look at Canada what will Canada specifically have to do about these submersible laws I think they're gonna have to put in standards and requirements for the safe operation of these vessels we see them around the world today the United States has laws regarding who could pilot and operate submersibles you see submersibles being used in areas like the Bahamas and off coral reefs to bring passengers in but this was a very unique environment in a very unhospitable environment where any danger any kind of flaw in this craft could result in the loss of it and I think Canada is going to have to re-look at what laws it has on the books regarding submersible Expeditions that originate and end back in their ports do you know much about Canada's laws on submersibles I'm sorry I don't uh Canada is very light on Maritime laws in general because of the fact that there's not many ships that are currently registered in Canada and so this is an area that's really going to need to be looked at this industry again has been a very well self-regulated industry by establishing classification societies and one of the reasons why classification societies are largely used has to do with insurance and so I have a really big question about who ensure this Expedition for the liabilities that could have incurred with a loss like this so I'm just trying to clarify some things here because it's quite fascinating do you feel that they launched from Canada because maybe our laws are light as you say no I I think the the Expeditions stem from Canada because of its location close to the wreck site but I I do think that there were a kind of a a void here in the use of such vessels and again you don't see the use I mean no one is really taking passengers down to 30 you know to 4 000 meters it's just a very unique nature that is Titanic and I think we're really finding ourselves where we were in the beginning of the aviation industry where corporations governments and very rich people were able to use Aviation uh today we think nothing about getting on an airplane and flying at forty thousand feet I think we're going to be at a point in the submersible industry where people will go on a submersible go down 14 000 feet without thinking we're just not there yet fascinating Sal mercogliano thank you for your insights very fascinating thank you for having me Salma cargilliano is a maritime historian at Campbell University

Channel: CBC News

Views: 311,399

Keywords: Titan, submersible, submarine, Titanic, OceanGate, coast guard, rescue, Atlantic Ocean, United States, cbcnews

Id: hpAjfFIG9Ks

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023