The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a chilling audio of the moment the Titan submersible imploded, killing all five passengers instantly as they descended towards the Titanic wreck site. The 20-second audio clip, published on Friday by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), features a burst of static, a thunderous boom and then an eerie return to white noise – believed to be the final sounds of the ill-fated submersible. Officials said that boom was the sound of the sub imploding before reaching the Titanic wreck on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean on June 18, 2023.
According to the New York Post, the recording was picked up by a moored passive acoustic recorded about 900 miles away from where the OceanGate vessel buckled under the water pressure. The US Coast Guard said the clip reveals “the suspected acoustic signature of the Titan submersible implosion.”
The #TitanMBI releases the suspected acoustic signature of the Titan submersible implosion. Audio recording courtesy of NOAA/NPS Ocean Noise Reference Station Network) https://t.co/h3ySH0PhiA pic.twitter.com/dXC7C1hy4y
— USCG MaritimeCommons (@maritimecommons) February 8, 2025
The Titan submersible tragedy in 2023 claimed the lives of five individuals, including renowned British adventurer Hamish Harding, father-son duo Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions.
The incident prompted intense scrutiny over the sub’s engineering as reports surfaced that the vessel had significant design flaws and was never independently certified for deep-sea travel.
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The Titan’s mothership had lost communication with the small submersible less than two hours into the dive, triggering a frantic search for the missing vessel. Its debris was discovered four days later by a remotely operated underwater vehicle. In October 2023, the US Coast Guard announced that it had recovered the last pieces of the submersible.
Later, investigators concluded that the sub had several structural flaws and safety hazards and had not been independently reviewed – as is standard practice – before setting off for the depths of the ocean. They revealed that the sub was plagued by numerous problems during previous expeditions, including 70 equipment issues reported in 2021 and 48 more in 2022.