The haunting audio of the Titan submersible’s catastrophic implosion has been made public.
The Titan submersible disaster was one of the most horrific tragedies in deep-sea exploration.
On June 18, 2023, the OceanGate vessel set off on a dive to the Titanic wreck site with five passengers. Less than two hours into the descent, the sub lost communication with its mothership, sparking a frantic, massive four-day search.
Hopes of a rescue were shattered when debris from the Titan was discovered on the ocean floor – which confirmed that the sub had imploded under immense pressure and instantly killed everyone on board.
Now, for the first time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released a chilling 20-second audio clip of the moment the doomed sub was destroyed.
Listen to the audio below:
The recording, published on Friday, captures the exact moment the Titan buckled under the crushing weight of the deep sea, just before reaching the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic.
It begins with staticky white noise, followed by a loud boom and reverb, before fading back into static.
The eerie recording was picked up by a moored passive acoustic recorder located about 900 miles away from the site of the disaster.
The U.S. Coast Guard later confirmed that the clip reveals “the suspected acoustic signature of the Titan submersible implosion”.
The ill-fated dive killed Stockton Rush, co-founder and CEO of OceanGate; Hamish Harding, a UK billionaire; Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a renowned French Titanic expert; and Shahzada Dawood, a wealthy Pakistani businessman, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.
Following the tragedy, a Coast Guard investigation revealed that the Titan had multiple structural flaws and safety risks that had never been independently reviewed before embarking on its deep-sea mission.
Unlike other deep-diving vessels, the sub did not meet standard safety certifications, raising serious concerns about the company’s approach to extreme-depth exploration.
According to Metro, Karl Stanley, a submersible pilot and designer of the Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration, claimed at a court hearing that Stockton Rush was more concerned with leaving “his mark on history” than the safety of himself and the five passengers.
“He knew that eventually, it was going to end like this, and he wasn’t going to be held accountable, but he was going to be the most famous of all his famous relatives,” he said.
Stanley revealed that he emailed the OceanGate CEO with safety concerns on several occasions but was repeatedly dismissed.
“I felt also this exchange of emails strained our relationship from what it had been previously. I felt like I pushed things as far as I could without him telling me to shut up and never talk to him again,” he added.
