Titanic sub update – Canadian police board mothership for interviews as they weigh criminal probe

The submarine expedition to the Titanic that claimed five lives over the weekend relied on a design featuring key components made out of carbon fiber, which experts say hasn’t been proven as a reliable material for deep sea use.

“Innovation is a wonderful thing,” Bart Kemper, a mechanical engineer from the Marine Technology Society, told NBC News. “But everything that is new and not tried introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty is risk.”

The wreck of the Titanic is at about 13,000 feet under the ocean, multiple times deeper than where US Navy subs typically operate. At that depth, pressure is nearly 400 times that of the ocean’s surface.

“It’s a design that’s not been used in this way at this depth,” Mr Kemper added. “All it has to do is fail in one spot and game over.”

Netflix to stream Titanic from 1 July, just days after the Titan submersible disaster that killed five people.

The five on board were on a mission to visit the ruins of the Titanic ship which sank in 1912, killing 1500 people.

However, Netflix is also facing criticism on social media after the streaming giant released a trailer for its new freediving documentary, The Deepest Breath.

Produced by A24, The Deepest Breath tells the story of Alessia Zecchini, the current holder of the freediving world record.

The trailer was shared on Tuesday (20 June) as rescue efforts were well underway to find the five missing passengers onboard the Titan, which went missing on an expedition to see the Titanic shipwreck.

On Twitter, many Netflix subscribers questioned the timing of the deep-sea-related release given the tragedy.

“The timing of this,” one person commented.

“Probably not the best timing for this,” another agreed.

Police in Canada announced on Saturday that they are considering a criminal investigation over the deaths of five men in the Oceangate submersible implosion.

Superintendent Kent Osmond of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Newfoundland and Labrador said law enforcement were in the early stages of the probe.

“Following the US Coast Guard’s announcement earlier this week that debris from the submersible was located and all five on board were presumed dead, we will now look at the circumstances that led to those deaths,” Mr Osmond said, at a press conference.

“Such an investigation will proceed only if our examination of the circumstances indicate criminal, federal or provincial laws may possibly have been broken.”

The desperate five-day search for the missing Titan submersible came to a tragic end on Thursday when debris was discovered close to the Titanic shipwreck.

OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman set off on a trip of a lifetime on Sunday morning (18 June), traveling around 13,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean to visit the famed ocean liner’s wreckage.

But the five explorers met a chillingly similar fate to the doomed White Star Line ship more than a century earlier.

Now, as ROVs continue to search the debris field, questions are mounting about what went wrong, whether the tragedy could have been avoided and what happens next.

Authorities from the U.S. and Canada began the process of investigating the cause of the fatal Titan submersible implosion even as they grappled with questions of who was responsible for determining how the tragedy unfolded.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that the U.S. Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a “major marine casualty” and the Coast Guard will lead the investigation. NTSB spokesperson Peter Knudson said that information was provided to the agency’s senior management by Coast Guard officials, and the NTSB has joined the investigation.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada said Saturday that it’s conducting an investigation into the loss of the Titan submersible and has been speaking with those who traveled on Titan‘s mothership, the Polar Prince.

The development comes as authorities from the U.S. and Canada began the process of probing the cause of the underwater implosion and grappled with questions of who was responsible for determining how the tragedy unfolded.

Maritime agencies are searching the area in the North Atlantic where the vessel was destroyed, killing all five people aboard.

Debris was located about 12,500 feet (3,810 meters) underwater, several hundred feet away from the Titanic wreckage it was on its way to explore.

“We are conducting a safety investigation in Canada given that this was a Canadian-flagged vessel that departed a Canadian port and was involved in this occurrence, albeit in international waters,” said Kathy Fox, chair of the transportation board.

“Other agencies may choose to conduct investigations and that’s up to them.”

The submarine expedition to the Titanic that claimed five lives over the weekend relied on a design featuring key components made out of carbon fiber, which experts say hasn’t been proven as a reliable material for deep sea use.

“Innovation is a wonderful thing,” Bart Kemper, a mechanical engineer from the Marine Technology Society, told NBC News. “But everything that is new and not tried introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty is risk.”

The wreck of the Titanic is at about 13,000 feet under the ocean, multiple times deeper than where US Navy subs typically operate. At that depth, pressure is nearly 400 times that of the ocean’s surface.

“It’s a design that’s not been used in this way at this depth,” Mr Kemper added. “All it has to do is fail in one spot and game over.”

“The phenomenon of “dark tourism” has fascinated researchers for many years, but tourists are being increasingly drawn to places associated with atrocity, violence and disaster. Historic sites include Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chernobyl (before the war in Ukraine) and Ground Zero. However, “experiences” can now be excursions to sites of slavery, war, the famous dead, serial murder, natural disasters and, as in the case of the OceanGate trip, maritime tragedies such as the Titanic.”