US

‘We’ve feared this’: veteran Titanic explorer tells of concern for missing sub

Loss of contact with vessel is ‘big concern’, says member of first expedition to locate Titanic wreck in 1985

Alistair Greig, a marine engineering professor, explains why finding and then rescuing a submersible missing near the Titanic wreckage will be so difficult.

Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Tue Jun 20 2023 - 10:44

A missing submersible near the wreck of the Titanic that has kicked off a frantic international search has left the deep sea exploration community “shattered”, a famed Canadian scientist and veteran explorer has said.

“This is the day that we have been fearing for a long, long time – when you lose a sub in really deep water,” Joe MacInnis, a member of the first expedition to locate the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, told the Guardian on Monday night. “It doesn’t look good.”

Authorities from Canada and the United States have deployed specialised aircraft and ships to search for the five people aboard a 6.4-metre (20ft) vessel, called Titan, that lost contact about one hour and 45 minutes into a planned dive Sunday, nearly 640km (400 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland.

OceanGate Expeditions, the US company that owns the submersible, said it was “exploring all options” to bring the crew back safely.

READ MORE

[ Missing Titanic sub: Race against time in search for tourist vessel with five on board ]

OceanGate operates trips that combine commercial tourism with scientific research and exploration, to the final resting place of the ill-fated ocean liner that struck an iceberg in 1912 and sank, killing more than 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew.

In deep sea expeditions, Mr MacInnis said, crews often worry about the “trinity”: fire, hull failure or entanglement.

Mr MacInnis is a veteran deep sea explorer who has completed 17 trips to the famed wreck with a Russian crew, as part of making the 1992 Imax documentary Titanica.

A joint US-Candian search operation is underway to locate a missing submarine that was taking tourists to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. Video: Reuters

He is also a close friend of filmmaker James Cameron who he introduced to the Russian submersible pilots involved. “The next thing you know Jim hires them and makes all his dives to the Titanic before he makes his big film,” he said, referring to the 1997 mega-blockbuster feature, Titanic, that Cameron directed.

On his second expedition to the Titanic, Mr MacInnis and the crew briefly found themselves stuck on part of the wreck. A second sub was sent to investigate and between the two figure out a way to gently jiggle the craft free. On that same trip, the crew lost radio contact after the sub went behind the Titanic’s propellers to film footage for the documentary.

“I’ll tell you for a while we were scratching our heads and hoping everything was OK. As soon as they got back from underneath the stern, we got radio contact back. And that was a big, big relief.”

While Mr MacInnis’s teams lost momentary contact, Titan had been out of contact for more than 30 hours by Monday night. “That’s a big concern, especially as time ticks on,” he said.

Mr MacInnis said that in the event the submersible is located deep within the ocean, any recovery will be “incredibly costly”.

“In any accident, you really want an analysis of what went wrong. And I suspect in this case, there will be a lot of head scratching and [if lost] we’ll likely see an effort to recover it if they can.”

On Monday, Rear Adm John Mauger of the US Coast Guard told reporters crews were “doing everything we can” to find the submersible.

The coast guard is relying on aircraft, some of which have underwater detection capabilities. But officials admitted they only have the capability to search for sounds at the moment.

The outcome officials are hoping for is that the vessel somehow limped to the surface and is drifting somewhere in the North Atlantic, awaiting rescue.

“We’ve feared this for a long time,” said Mr MacInnis, adding the news has rocked a tight-knit community of scientists and explorers who have spent much of their lives pushing further into the darkness of the deep sea.

“But this is the reality of the ocean, especially in its deeper waters. It really is a place of scorching fear. And it is a place of fugitive beauty,” he said.

LATEST STORIES