(NEW YORK) — Two newly released reports capture the growing anti-LGBTQ+ extremism across the U.S., that has led to protests, threats and violence against the queer community.
A new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has found significantly more incidents of anti-drag protests, threats, and violence than previously reported, with the report adding that anti-drag efforts are accelerating amid growing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment from conservative politicians.
Another report from the Anti-Defamation League and the LGBTQ+ organization GLAAD shows there have been more than 350 incidents of harassment, vandalism or assault from June 2022 to April 2023, which the report states coincide with an increase in rhetoric and legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Advocates warn of the dangers that they say lie in growing anti-LGBTQ+ extremist activity.
“Extremists, including elected officials, must be held accountable for inciting violence and using vile rhetoric against marginalized people who just want to live in safety and peace,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “Targeting people for who they are, or for their race and faith, is an attack on fundamental freedoms, and the health and well-being of all in our country.”
Anti-drag extremism
From June 2022 to May 2023, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report recorded 203 incidents that targeted drag events online and offline across the U.S. The report found an increase in incidences where online anti-drag commentary led to offline activity against these events.
These threats are being carried out by not just anti-LGBTQ+ groups but also neo-fascist, white supremacist, parental rights and Christian nationalist groups, according to the study.
“The numbers in this report suggest that we run the risk of dangerous backsliding toward hate and violence directed at LGBTQ+ people,” said Clara Martiny, digital research analyst of ISD, in a statement on the report.
The increase in threats coincides with the increased use of false anti-LGBTQ+ stereotypes by conservative figures that activists say have historically been used to marginalize the community and rile up a political base.
“It is no surprise that when political leaders advance anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and schools are forced to censor LGBTQ+ voices, anti-LGBTQ+ threats and harassment rise,” Martiny said.
The Proud Boys is the leading group behind anti-drag activity, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report. They’ve targeted 60 drag events, according to the report, with 39 protests resulting in verbal or physical altercations.
The social media account, Libs of TikTok, on Twitter and TikTok is one of the largest purveyors of anti-drag content online, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report states.
“The spread of anti-LGBTQ+ hate in the U.S. is advancing across the globe,” said Dixon Osburn, Executive Director of ISD, United States in a statement. “It’s imperative that policymakers address the rise of hate and extremism online and off. It starts with taking online threats seriously. We need to be proactive in protecting LGBTQ+ communities to avoid a snowballing effect of hate.”
Other anti-LGBTQ extremism
Similar to the report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the GLAAD and ADL report found that false “groomer” or “pedophilia” conspiracy theory was the most-cited anti-LGBTQ+ trope cited in 191 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault.
According to the GLAAD and ADL report, almost half of all incidents — 49% — were perpetrated in some way by people associated with extremist groups.
Perpetrators most frequently targeted drag events and performers, making up 138 of the more than 350 incidents. Schools and educators, health care facilities and providers and government buildings and elected officials were among the targeted places and people.
The ADL and GLAAD state that these figures only capture publicly reported incidents: “Since many anti-LGBTQ+ hate and extremism incidents go unreported, the true numbers are likely far higher,” a statement from the groups read.
“We hope these stark findings serve as a wakeup call to lawmakers, civil society leaders, and community leaders to stand up to this onslaught of hate and support our LGBTQ+ community,” ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement.
File image of the Titan submersible prior to commence diving. (Ocean Gate)
(NEW YORK) — All passengers are believed to be lost after a desperate dayslong search for a submersible carrying five people that vanished while on a tour of the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The 21-foot deep-sea vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after submerging on Sunday morning with a 96-hour oxygen supply. That amount of breathable air was forecast to run out on Thursday morning, according to the United States Coast Guard, which is coordinating the multinational search and rescue efforts.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jun 22, 11:15 PM EDT
Dawood family issues statement
The Hussain and Kulsum Dawood family has issued a statement expressing their condolences.
“It is with profound grief that we announced the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood,” the family said. “Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”
“We are truly grateful to all those involved in the rescue operations,” they continued. “Their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time. We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues and well-wishers from all over the world who have stood by us during our hour of need. The immense love and support we receive continues to help us endure this unimaginable loss.”
“We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the other passengers on the Titan submersible,” the family added. “At this time, we are unable to receive calls and request that support, condolences and prayers be messaged instead. Details of their final rites in this world will be announced soon.”
-ABC News’ Habibullah Khan
Jun 22, 11:04 PM EDT
Engro, company one of the sub passengers worked for, offers condolences
Engro, the company sub passenger Shahzada Dawood worked as the vice chairman, offered its condolences for both Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, on Thursday.
“With heavy hearts and great sadness, we grieve the loss of our vice chairman, Shahzada Dawood, and his beloved son, Suleman Dawood,” the company said in the message. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dawood family at this tragic time.”
“We extend our heartfelt condolences to the family, colleagues, friends and all those around the world who grieve this unthinkable loss,” it added.
-ABC News’ Habibullah Khan
Jun 22, 7:20 PM EDT
Why Titanic continues to captivate
The submersible that catastrophically imploded while on a voyage to see the Titanic wreckage has highlighted a high-risk, experimental and exclusive tourism opportunity to see what is largely considered to be the most famous shipwreck of all time.
The doomed ocean liner has intrigued the public from the moment it tragically crashed into an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank on April 15, 1912 — as well as throughout the century-plus since.
Visits to the underwater site have been conducted in recent decades to retrieve artifacts, study the Titanic’s gradual decay and simply lay eyes on the storied shipwreck, which has inspired a wealth of novels, plays, TV shows and films.
“The Titanic has basically been in popular culture since the night it sank,” Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told ABC News.
Jun 22, 7:20 PM EDT
Why Titanic continues to captivate
The submersible that catastrophically imploded while on a voyage to see the Titanic wreckage has highlighted a high-risk, experimental and exclusive tourism opportunity to see what is largely considered to be the most famous shipwreck of all time.
The doomed ocean liner has intrigued the public from the moment it tragically crashed into an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank on April 15, 1912 — as well as throughout the century-plus since.
Visits to the underwater site have been conducted in recent decades to retrieve artifacts, study the Titanic’s gradual decay and simply lay eyes on the storied shipwreck, which has inspired a wealth of novels, plays, TV shows and films.
“The Titanic has basically been in popular culture since the night it sank,” Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told ABC News.
Jun 22, 7:04 PM EDT
Company behind Titan overstated details of partnerships with Boeing, others
The company behind the submersible that imploded exaggerated the details of the industry partnerships behind the development and engineering of the underwater vessel.
In some public statements, OceanGate suggested the Titan — its only vessel able to reach Titanic depths — was designed and engineered with the assistance of entities such as Boeing, the University of Washington and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In statements to ABC News, each entity described its role, or lack thereof, as more limited than sometimes stated by OceanGate.
When asked about these exaggerations about the role of partnerships in the development of the Titan submersible, an OceanGate representative declined to comment on the matter.
-ABC News’ Peter Charalambous
Jun 22, 6:50 PM EDT
Navy likely detected sound of the implosion on Sunday: Official
A senior U.S. Navy official confirmed to ABC News that an underwater acoustic detection system heard on Sunday what was likely the implosion of the Titan submersible. The information was immediately shared with the U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday and analysis continued afterwards.
“The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” the senior official told ABC News in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
According to the official, “This information was considered with the compilation of additional acoustic data provided by other partners and the decision was made to continue our mission as a search and rescue and make every effort to save the lives on board.”
Separately, a U.S. defense official said an analysis of the “banging” noises picked up by sonar buoys were not from the missing submersible but were either natural ocean sounds, biological noises or noises associated with the surface response vessels.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 22, 6:50 PM EDT
Probe seeks answers on why Titanic sub imploded
U.S. Coast Guard officials conceded they are facing a daunting investigation to determine what caused the Titan submersible to implode underwater near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five explorers aboard.
Officials said the 21-foot-long Titan was found in pieces by a remotely operated vehicle on a smooth section of ocean floor more than 2 miles beneath the surface.
“This was an incredibly complex case and we’re still working to develop details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response,” Mauger said.
-ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson
Jun 22, 6:41 PM EDT
What a ‘catastrophic implosion’ means
The Titan submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” the U.S. Coast Guard determined.
At the depth of the Titanic, which sits 3,800 meters below sea level, the pressure reaches a level 380 times the atmospheric pressure on the Earth’s surface, Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, said in a blog post on Tuesday.
A fault or failure in the hull of the Titan could have led to an implosion, as the vessel gave way to the high pressure of the deep sea, Williams said.
The implosion of a submersible delivers immense force, oceanographer Bob Ballard told ABC News on Thursday.
-ABC News’ Max Zahn
Jun 22, 6:11 PM EDT
Navy detected sound of the implosion on Sunday: Official
A senior U.S. Navy official confirmed to ABC News that a secret underwater acoustic detection system heard on Sunday what was likely the implosion of the Titan submersible.
“The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” the official told ABC News in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
Separately, a U.S. defense official said an analysis of the “banging” noises picked up by sonar buoys were not from the missing submersible but were either natural ocean sounds, biological noises or noises associated with the surface response vessels.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 22, 6:10 PM EDT
Hamish Harding remembered as ‘passionate explorer’
Hamish Harding, a British businessman who was among the five people killed in the Titan implosion, was remembered as a “passionate explorer” by his loved ones.
“Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply,” a statement sent on behalf of his family and Action Aviation, the company he chaired, said. “To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend.”
“He was one of a kind and we adored him. He was a passionate explorer — whatever the terrain — who lived his life for his family, his business and for the next adventure,” the statement continued. “What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved.”
-ABC News’ Mark Guarino
Jun 22, 5:35 PM EDT
Explorer Robert Ballard on ‘extremely powerful’ implosion
Explorer Robert Ballard, who was on the 1985 expedition that discovered the Titanic wreckage and has made many dives since, reacted to news of the implosion with ABC News on Thursday.
“It’s very tragic what happened, I know the people that passed away,” he said, adding that he’s known OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the vessel, for 20 years. “I know this was his dream, so my heart goes out to him and his family and the families of all the people who lost loved ones.”
Ballard surmised the crew likely experienced difficulties and began to drop weights to ascend to the surface but “never made it.”
“If you’re on your way up and you’re buoyant and you don’t make it, it’s a catastrophic implosion,” he said.
“I don’t think people can appreciate the amazing energy involved in the destructive process of an implosion,” Ballard continued. “It just takes and literally shreds everything. So it’s extremely powerful.”
Jun 22, 5:04 PM EDT
Explorers Club remembers lost crew
The Explorers Club reacted to news of the submersible’s implosion, saying in a letter to members on Thursday: “Our hearts are broken.”
President Richard Garriott de Cayeux noted that two of the passengers lost in the implosion — Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet — were members of the Explorers Club, while OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was a friend of the society who had conducted lectures at its headquarters.
“Hamish Harding is a dear friend to me personally and to The Explorers Club,” Garriott de Cayeux said. “He holds several world records and has continued to push dragons off maps both in person and through supporting expeditions and worthy causes.”
Nargeolet was “one of the foremost experts on submersible expeditions to the Titanic,” Garriott de Cayeux said.
“They were both drawn to explore, like so many of us, and did so in the name of meaningful science for the betterment of mankind,” he continued. “They pushed themselves in their entrepreneurial pursuits as they did in exploration.”
Jun 22, 4:37 PM EDT
James Cameron calls OceanGate’s carbon-fiber hull ‘fundamentally flawed’
In reacting to news of the OceanGate submersible implosion, “Titanic” director James Cameron told ABC News that he was “struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field.”
Cameron, who has built his own submersible, was critical of OceanGate’s use of a carbon-fiber hull, calling it “fundamentally flawed.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the five passengers killed on the submersible, had previously said he believed a sub made with carbon fiber would have a better strength-to-buoyancy ratio than titanium.
Jun 22, 3:59 PM EDT
James Cameron reacts to implosion: ‘Quite surreal’
“Titanic” director James Cameron, who has explored the wreckage site himself, called the implosion “quite surreal” and noted that one of the passengers killed, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, was a friend of his.
“For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process,” Cameron told ABC News Thursday.
Jun 22, 3:11 PM EDT
Debris consistent with ‘catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber’
Coast Guard officials said a remote-operated vehicle found the tail cone of the Titan submersible about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic Thursday morning.
Additional debris found was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, said during a press briefing.
The passengers’ families were immediately notified.
Five major pieces of debris were found, including the nose cone, officials said.
The debris indicates there was a “catastrophic implosion” of the vessel, Mauger said.
It’s too early to tell when the implosion occurred, officials said.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor,” Mauger said.
Jun 22, 2:52 PM EDT
All lives believed to be lost: OceanGate
All five aboard the missing submersible are believed to be lost amid a search for the vessel, OceanGate said.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the statement continued. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
Jun 22, 1:39 PM EDT
Canadian assets on scene for assistance
A Royal Canadian Navy ship HMCS Glace Bay has been on scene since about 8 a.m. ET Thursday morning. The ship provides a medical team specializing in dive medicine and a six-person mobile hyperbaric recompression chamber, according to officials.
Canadian Coast Guard ships John Cabot, Ann Harvey and Terry Fox are on scene and ready to provide rescue equipment and personnel should assistance be required. A Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora aircraft is also maintaining continuous on-scene support with additional aircrews and assets, according to officials.
-ABC News’ Luke Barr
Jun 22, 12:10 PM EDT
‘Debris field’ discovered within search area, US Coast Guard says
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter late Thursday morning that “a debris field was discovered within the search area by” a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) “near the Titanic” wreckage.
“Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information,” the U.S. Coast Guard tweeted.
The Coast Guard is set to hold a briefing on the findings from the Horizon Arctic’s ROV at 3 p.m. ET.
Jun 22, 10:58 AM EDT
Crew members could survive for ‘hours’ after airtank depleted, doctor says
Despite their onboard oxygen tank expected to be depleted sometime Thursday morning, one doctor says they may have more time if the passengers are still alive. He estimates the five people aboard the lost Titanic tourist sub could survive for 10 to 20 hours with air still circulating through the experimental capsule.
Dr. Richard Moon, a professor of anesthesiology at Duke University, said that despite conditions being dire, those aboard the OceanGate Expedition’s submersible could extend the oxygen available after its tank is depleted by staying calm and moving as little as possible.
“The actual amount of time that they have is unpredictable, but it’s probably less than 24 hours after the final oxygen in the tank is depleted,” Moon, director of the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology, told ABC News.
Jun 22, 10:50 AM EDT
French ROV enters water in search area
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter on Thursday morning that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed by the French vessel L’Atalante has entered the water in the search area.
The U.S. Coast Guard also gave an update on the conditions at sea, saying winds were at 14 mph with gusts up to 19 mph, swells were 4 to 5 feet and the air temperature was 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Jun 22, 7:19 AM EDT
Canadian ROV begins search on sea floor
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter early Thursday that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed by the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic has reached the sea floor, beginning its search for the missing submersible.
Meanwhile, the French vessel L’Atalante is preparing its ROV to enter the water in the search area, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Jun 22, 6:29 AM EDT
Search becomes dire as time runs out
Time is running out as rescuers race to locate and save five people trapped in a submersible that vanished during a tour of the Titanic wreckage on Sunday morning.
The deep-sea vessel submerged at 8 a.m. ET on Sunday with a 96-hour oxygen supply, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. That amount of breathable air is forecast to run out on Thursday morning.
The search and rescue mission remains ongoing.
Jun 22, 12:21 AM EDT
Wife of missing OceanGate CEO is great-great-granddaughter of couple who died on Titanic: NYT
The New York Times traced the lineage of Wendy Rush, wife of missing OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, and found that she’s the great-great-granddaughter of a couple who died on the Titanic, Isidor and Ida Straus.
The executive director of the Straus Historical Society told ABC News that The Times article, which cites archival records, is largely correct with regard to Wendy Weil Rush’s heritage.
Jun 21, 5:44 PM EDT
US Navy crane in Newfoundland but awaiting ship
A U.S. Navy portable crane system capable of bringing up items from as deep as 20,000 feet has arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, but is waiting to be welded onto a chartered ship to take it to the search area for the missing submersible, according to a U.S. Navy official.
The Navy has not yet contracted a ship for the salvage system, known as Fly Away Deep Ocean Salvage System or FADOSS, the official told reporters Wednesday. Once the ship is contracted, Navy teams will spend approximately 24 hours working around the clock to weld the system aboard the ship before it can leave port, the official said.
FADOSS is the salvage system the U.S. Navy uses for all of its deep-water recoveries. Last year, it was able to bring up an F/A-18 aircraft that had fallen into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 21, 2:56 PM EDT
Head of Horizon Maritime, which owns the Polar Prince boat, holding out hope
The co-founder and Board chair of Horizon Maritime, the company that owns the Polar Prince boat that took the Titan submersible out to sea, is speaking out.
“We have been supporting the Titanic expeditions for several years,” Sean Leet said, calling the Polar Prince “an iconic former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker that has been upgraded with advanced technology.”
“All protocols were followed” for the submersible’s mission, he said at a news conference Wednesday, calling the missing sub an “unprecedented” situation.
Equipment heading to search site can reach the depths of the submersible and potentially take it to the surface, he said.
“We wish to thank everyone involved in this rescue mission, especially the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards, the organizations that have made their marina assets available including the French government … [and] the many private companies that have dropped everything at a moment’s notice,” Leet said.
“Our thoughts and focus remain with the crew of the Titan and their families,” he said.
Leet said he is holding out hope that the five-person crew will be brought home safely.
“We’ll continue to hold out hope until the very end,” he said.
Jun 21, 1:34 PM EDT
Coast Guard searching in area where noise was detected
As crews scour the Atlantic for the missing submersible, the Coast Guard said it’s searching in the area where a noise was detected.
The unidentified noise was detected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
The data on the noise was sent to the U.S. Navy to be examined, he said.
“We have to remain optimistic and hopeful when we’re in a search and rescue mission,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator, said at a news conference Wednesday.
The five crew members submerged underwater Sunday morning with about 96 hours of oxygen available to them. That oxygen is forecast to run out Thursday morning.
When asked about the search becoming a recovery mission, Frederick said Wednesday, “We’re not there yet.”
Jun 21, 1:21 PM EDT
Coast Guard searching in area where noise was detected
As crews scour the Atlantic for the missing submersible, the Coast Guard said it’s searching in the area where a noise was detected.
The unidentified noise was detected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
“We have to remain optimistic and hopeful when we’re in a search and rescue mission,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator, said at a news conference Wednesday.
The five crew members submerged underwater Sunday morning with about 96 hours of oxygen available to them. That oxygen is forecast to run out Thursday morning.
When asked about the search becoming a recovery mission, Frederick said Wednesday, “We’re not there yet.”
Jun 21, 12:56 PM EDT
Canada sends ship with advanced, deep sonar
One of the ships the Canadian Coast Guard sent to the rescue effort, the John Cabot, is equipped with advanced, deep sonar, said Joyce Murray, minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard.
“We’ve sent so many assets to the search team to help,” Murray said. “Authorities still have hope in the mission.”
-ABC News’ Will Gretsky
Jun 21, 12:47 PM EDT
Former passenger says his sub lost contact with host ship on all 4 trips
Mike Reiss, who has done four, 10-hour dives with OceanGate, including one to the Titanic, told ABC News his sub lost contact with the host ship on every dive.
“Every time they lost communication — that seems to be just something baked into the system,” he said.
With no GPS, Reiss said it took his crew three hours to find the Titanic despite landing just 500 yards from the ship.
Reiss said he signed “a waiver that mentions death three times on the first page.”
“It is always in the back of your head that this is dangerous, and any small problem will turn into a major catastrophe,” he said.
He said the submersible is built simply and is “just propelled by two fans on the outside.”
“Even I was able to steer and navigate the sub for a while,” he noted.
Reiss said his greatest fear was that the sub wouldn’t be able to release the weights that force it to submerge once it was time to rise to the surface.
-ABC News’ Gio Benitez and Sam Sweeney
Jun 21, 9:00 AM EDT
Would-be crew member of missing sub speaks out
Digital marketing tycoon Chris Brown originally planned to go on Sunday’s submersible tour of the Titanic wreckage but withdrew due to safety concerns. His friend, Hamish Harding, is among those aboard the missing vessel.
Brown, who described himself as a “modern day adventurer,” admitted that he knew “very little” about the tour operator, OceanGate Expeditions, prior to signing up. But he said the deep-sea trip initially sounded “like a great idea.”
“The Titanic’s obviously an iconic wreck,” Brown told ABC News’ Michael Strahan during an interview Wednesday on Good Morning America.
“OceanGate had put forward this program to go down and do a 3D scan of the wreck,” he added. “So it’s a chance for an expedition, exploration and adding a bit of science into the situation.”
Brown said safety concerns ultimately led him to pull out of the trip, but he declined to go into detail.
“I’m not really sure that this is the time to be going into that sort of thing,” he added. “I think that the focus right now has to be on trying to rescue these people. It’s not fair on the families and friends to be making speculation about what might’ve happened or how it happened at this point.”
Brown said he feels “no” apprehension about joining similar projects in the future but noted that it’s important to “think about all the risks.”
“If you don’t have an appetite for those risks, then you might not go ahead,” he said. “You may try and mitigate those by bringing in some expertise from outside. You might have other risks or dangers that could be mitigated by changing the time of when you go out there.”
Jun 21, 7:33 AM EDT
New details emerge about how the missing sub navigated the ocean
The submersible that was reported missing while on a tour of the underwater wreckage of the Titanic is an unorthodox vessel with a relatively unproven history, according to company press materials and experts familiar with underwater vehicles.
News of the vessel’s disappearance prompted a flurry of interest in the company OceanGate Expeditions and its deep-sea submersible called the Titan.
The company’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, who is one of the five people aboard the missing vessel, manned the Titan’s first “validation dive” to 4,000 meters in 2018, according to the company. The company then began offering tourists the opportunity to dive to the depths of the Titanic in the following years, selling tickets for the 2023 journey for $250,000.
Jun 21, 6:57 AM EDT
‘Banging’ picked up by sonar in search area, source says
A source familiar confirmed to ABC News that there were reports of “banging” that were picked up by sonar in the search area on Tuesday morning, but nothing has yet been found.
The U.S. Coast Guard had said early Wednesday that an aircraft with sonar capability “detected underwater noises in the search area,” but remotely operated vehicles were unable to find the origin of the sound.
Jun 21, 6:34 AM EDT
Titanic mapping company ‘fully mobilized’ to help
Magellan, an international exploration company that digitally mapped the Titanic wreckage last year, said Wednesday that it is “ready to support” the search for the missing submersible and is “fully mobilized to help.”
The U.K.-based company told ABC News that it was contacted by the submersible’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions, early Monday and “immediately offered our knowledge of the specific site and also our expertise operating at depth considerably in advance of what is required for this incident.”
“We have been working full-time with U.K. and U.S. agencies to secure the necessary air support to move our specialist equipment and support crew,” Magellan said in a statement.
When asked for comment about media reports that U.S. authorities have failed to give Magellan the necessary permits to participate in the search, the company told ABC News it “does not not wish to comment on any specific media report.”
Jun 21, 12:34 AM EDT
USCG: Canadian aircraft detected ‘underwater noises’ but search ‘yielded negative results’
“Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area,” the U.S. Coast Guard tweeted early Wednesday morning. “As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue.”
The data from the P-3 has been shared with U.S. Navy experts for further analysis, the Coast Guard added.
Jun 21, 12:34 AM EDT
Lawsuit alleged flaws with Titanic sub now missing
A former employee of OceanGate alleged in a 2018 counterclaim lawsuit that he was fired for raising concerns about quality control and testing of potential flaws in the same experimental submersible that went missing this week.
David Lochridge, an engineer and submarine pilot, claimed in his counterclaim against OceanGate that he was hired in 2015 by the Everett, Washington, company to ensure the safety of all crew and clients during the submersible and surface operations of the vessel called Titan. But when he expressed concerns about the design and testing of the minisub’s hull, he said he was terminated by the company.
OceanGate had initially sued Lochridge alleging, among other things, breach of contract, fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets — all claims he denied.
In its lawsuit, OceanGate accused Lochridge of breaching his contract by discussing the company’s confidential information with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration “when he filed a false report claiming that he was discharged in retaliation for being a whistleblower.”
Jun 20, 10:15 PM EDT
Latest Coast Guard bulletin spells out timeline for missing sub search
The U.S. Coast Guard sent out its latest release Tuesday night on the search for the missing submersible at the Titanic crash site.
According to the latest release:
Sunday, June 18, 8 a.m. ET: Submersible launches, supposed to resurface at 3 p.m., but an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, it loses contact.
Sunday, June 18, 5:40 p.m. ET: Coast Guard receives report of overdue submersible.
Monday, June 19: Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and C-130 Hercules aircraft, as well as a Canadian P8 aircraft equipped with underwater sonar capability, search for the missing submersible, according to a previous release.
Tuesday, June 20, 7 a.m. ET: Bahamian research vessel Deep Energy arrives.
Tuesday, June 20, 4 p.m. ET: C-130 crew from Air National Guard 106th arrives.
Jun 20, 8:33 PM EDT
Experts expressed Titan safety concerns in 2018 letter
Members of a committee specializing in submersibles expressed “unanimous concern regarding the development” of Titan in a 2018 letter addressed to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who is one of the passengers aboard the missing vessel.
The letter was obtained by The New York Times and was later authenticated by ABC News.
The letter warned of possible “catastrophic” problems with Titan’s development that could have “serious consequences for everyone in the industry.” The letter goes on to say that OceanGate’s safety claims were “misleading to the public” and insisted Titan be reviewed by a third-party organization.
The letter, which was addressed from the Marine Technology Society, was never approved to be sent to OceanGate though was quickly leaked to its CEO, according to committee chair William Kohnen.
“The letter did represent in 2018 the consensus by many people in the industry that they were not considering following the standard safety protocols and designs that the industry uses,” Kohnen told ABC News.
Though he wishes it was not leaked at the time, nor now to The New York Times, Kohnen said he stands by the letter and its warnings.
“The company had indicated that their state of innovation was beyond, beyond what was allowable within the regulatory standards we have today and that they would proceed without certification,” Kohnen said. “That worried a number of people in the industry.”
Kohnen acknowledged that OceanGate did “heed” some of the comments made in the 2018 letter.
-ABC News’ Amanda Maile and Victor Ordoñez
Jun 20, 6:02 PM EDT
NASA weighs in on missing submersible
NASA released a statement Tuesday on the Titan, saying it remains “hopeful the crew will be found unharmed.”
“NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center had a Space Act Agreement with OceanGate, and consulted on materials and manufacturing processes for the submersible. NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities,” the agency said.
-ABC News’ Gina Sunseri
Jun 20, 6:17 PM EDT
Search teams have covered 7,600 square miles
Search and rescue teams have now covered 7,600 square miles — an area bigger than the state of Connecticut — as they scour the ocean for the missing submersible, Coast Guard officials said.
A grid depicting the expanding search area is expected Tuesday night, according to a public information affairs lieutenant for the First District of the U.S. Coast Guard.
-ABC News’ Miles Cohen
Jun 20, 3:09 PM EDT
US Navy sending salvage experts, equipment to help with submersible
The U.S. Navy said it’s sending to the search site experts and equipment “designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects.”
The equipment, which can lift up to 60,000 pounds, and the experts will arrive in Canada Tuesday night, the Navy said.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said earlier Tuesday that the Navy was”on standby” to help with the search for the missing submersible, because the Navy has “some deep-water capabilities that the Coast Guard wouldn’t necessarily have.”
President Joe Biden is “watching events closely,” Kirby said, adding that Biden and the White House offer their thoughts “to the crew onboard, as well as to the — what is no doubt — worried family members back on shore.”
Jun 20, 1:24 PM EDT
3 Air Force C-17’s transporting equipment to Newfoundland
Three U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft will be transporting commercial equipment from Buffalo, New York, to Newfoundland, Canada, to help with the search efforts, according to a U.S. official.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 20, 1:16 PM EDT
Search area larger than Connecticut, about 41 hours of oxygen left
Efforts to locate the missing submersible are ongoing, and the “complex” search covers an area larger than the state of Connecticut, Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said at a news conference Tuesday.
Crews are scouring the ocean 900 miles east of Cape Cod and 400 miles south of St. John’s, Canada, he said.
The missing five-person crew on the submersible has about 41 hours of oxygen left, Frederick noted.
“We will do everything in our power to effect a rescue,” Frederick said.
“We have a group of our nation’s best experts,” he said, and once the sub is located, “those experts will be looking at what the next course of action is” to rescue the crew members.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the crew and their families and their loved ones,” Frederick added.
Jun 20, 12:58 PM EDT
Former ABC News correspondent recounts moment his sub was trapped in Titanic’s propeller
In 2000, Dr. Michael Guillen, then an ABC News correspondent, was filming from the wreck of the Titanic when his vessel became trapped in the propeller.
“When we collided with the propeller, and I started seeing those big chunks of metal raining down on us … the first reaction I had was, ‘This can’t be happening,'” he recalled to ABC News on Tuesday.
“We got caught by this underwater turn and just drove us right into the blades,” Guillen said.
“This voice came into my head and said, you know, ‘This is how it’s going to end for you,'” he recalled. “I’ll never forget those words.”
“I’m very aware of what these poor souls on board the ship the Titan are experiencing,” he said. “I am just heartbroken about it.”
Jun 20, 11:35 AM EDT
French sending assistance
At the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, a French ship named Atalante is diverting to the area of the missing submissive and should reach the area Wednesday night.
The ship has an exploration robot that can dive up to 4,000 meters, according to a spokesman for France’s Ifremer Institute.
Jun 20, 9:04 AM EDT
‘It’s a race against time’
Per Wimmer, an explorer and global financier, told ABC News he was “shocked” and “horrified” to hear of the missing submersible.
“It felt very personal. … I’ve been wanting to go down to the Titanic for more than a decade,” Wimmer said.
He estimated that there’s been between 150 and 200 missions to the Titanic.
There “are very, very few submersibles in the whole world that can go down to the depth of Titanic, which sits at 3,800 meters, or about 12,000 feet,” Wimmer said. “It’s very deep — most submersibles can go down to about 1,000 meters.”
“It’s a race against time, because there’s only 96 hours of oxygen on board. And after that, if you haven’t reached the surface, you starve of oxygen,” he said.
“Our best hope at the moment is that the safety mechanism will be activated,” he said. “It is supposed to be able to float to the surface, little by little, and then they can open the hatch and hopefully get out again. That is the only hope we have, because you do not have enough time to get another submersible that can go that deep.”
Jun 20, 8:19 AM EDT
What to know about the 5 people aboard the missing sub
Renowned explorers and a father-son duo were among the five people aboard a submersible that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday while touring the Titanic wreckage, ABC News has learned.
ABC News has confirmed and identified four of those on aboard as Hamish Harding, a British businessman, pilot and space tourist; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Titanic expert; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his son Suleman Dawood.
Jun 20, 7:48 AM EDT
US Coast Guard commander talks search for missing sub
The United States Coast Guard commander leading the search for a missing submersible off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, said Tuesday morning that crews in multiple aircraft have flown over an area of the Atlantic Ocean “roughly about the size of Connecticut” while “looking for any signs of surfacing.”
“As we continue on with the search, we’re expanding our capabilities to be able to search under the water as well,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, told ABC News’ Robin Roberts during an interview on Good Morning America.
A commercial vessel with remotely operated vehicles is now on scene that will allow rescuers to search underwater, according to Mauger.
“This is a complex case,” he added. “The Coast Guard doesn’t have all the resources to be able to affect this kind of rescue, although this is an area that’s within our search zone.”
In many cases, Mauger said, the Coast Guard’s role is to coordinate all of the assets and technical expertise that can be used in a search, in addition to operating aircraft or ships when necessary.
“In this particular case, we’ve established a unified command with the United States Navy, with the Canadian Armed Forces, with the Canadian Coast Guard and with the private operator OceanGate Expeditions to make sure that we understand what’s needed and deploy all available equipment to the scene that could be used to locate this submersible, whether it’s on the surface or down beneath the surface,” he said.
Crews have been working “around the clock” to locate the deep-sea vessel since it lost contact with its operator on Sunday morning, according to Mauger.
In the last 24 hours, a Canadian aircraft has been dropping sonar buoys into the water that can pick up sound the submersible may be emitting. Vessels that have the capability to listen with their own sonar equipment are also on scene, according to Mauger.
“If they are making sound, that’s certainly one of the ways that we’re going to use to locate them,” he said.
Jun 20, 6:18 AM EDT
Missing sub is believed to be deeper than NATO rescue capability
A tourist submersible that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday is believed to be at depths that greatly exceed the capabilities of the NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS), according to a spokesperson for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense.
“As the host nation for NATO’s multinational submarine rescue capability, we continue to monitor the incident in the North Atlantic and will guide and assist in any response activity as appropriate,” the spokesperson told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday.
The U.K. has not been approached to offer assistance in the ongoing search for the deep-sea vessel off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, according to the spokesperson.
Initial reports indicate that the depths of water involved greatly exceed that which the NSRS team can safely operate — 610 meters for the NSRS submersible and 1,000 meters for the NSRS remotely operated vehicle, according to the spokesperson.
The NSRS is based at the home of the U.K. Royal Navy Submarine Service in HM Naval Base Clyde, the U.K. Royal Navy’s headquarters in Scotland. Introduced in 2006, the tri-national capability team can respond to a stricken submarine in rescuable water which is capable of mating with the NSRS submarine rescue vehicle, according to the spokesperson.
Jun 20, 5:03 AM EDT
Former Navy sub captain on rescue options
Rescuers racing against the clock to save the five people trapped in a tourist submersible nearly two miles deep in the Atlantic Ocean are facing major obstacles that could make saving the people onboard extremely difficult, according to a former U.S. Navy submarine commander.
Retired Capt. David Marquet told ABC News on Monday that this type of rescue operation is complicated because there aren’t nearby U.S. or Canadian underwater vessels that can go as deep as the Titanic wreckage, which sits 13,400 feet below the ocean’s surface. Also, the ocean is pitch black at that depth.
“The odds are against them,” Marquet said. “There’s a ship in Boston that has this ability to either lower cable and connect to it or have a claw. It’s still a thousand miles away.”
Even if a vessel was able to locate the submersible and lower a cable, it’s extremely difficult to safely navigate the waters and attach it, according to Marquet.
“You’ve got to get it exactly right,” he told ABC News. “It’s sort of like … getting one of those toys out of those arcade machines. In general, you miss.”
Rescuers do have one advantage, Marquet said, as weather conditions off the coast of Newfoundland are not rough and will not disturb any boat or vessel there.
Marquet added that if the five people aboard are still alive, they would be asked to sleep to conserve their oxygen.
“We would put the vast majority of the crew to sleep because that’s when you’re using the least amount of oxygen and you’re expelling the least amount of carbon dioxide,” he said.
Jun 20, 4:27 AM EDT
What to know about the missing sub
A submersible on a tour of the Titanic wreckage was reported overdue by its operator OceanGate Expeditions on Sunday, prompting the United States Coast Guard to launch a search and rescue effort for the 22-foot, 23,000-pound vessel.
Designed with life support to sustain five crew members for 96 hours, the submersible would need to be rescued in three days to save its five passengers, according to the Coast Guard.
Stockton Rush founded Washington-based OceanGate in 2009 to make deep-sea exploration more accessible to scientists and tourists. Fourteen years, more than 200 dives and three submersible designs later, the company now finds itself in a desperate search to recover the submersible carrying five people aboard that’s gone missing off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
OceanGate confirmed Monday it had lost contact with a submersible, saying in a statement: “We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families. We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
(NEW YORK) — Renowned Hollywood director and Titanic researcher James Cameron has compared the tragic loss of the submersible Titan to the very thing that may have led the Titanic to its own demise, overconfidence that led to disaster.
Cameron, who famously directed the Oscar-winning blockbuster Titanic, told ABC News on Thursday he noticed parallels between the 1912 sinking of the British passenger liner and the demise of the submersible designed specifically to visit what remains of the sunken ship.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet, he steamed up full speed into an ice field on a moonless night,” Cameron said. “And many people died as a result and for us very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site.”
Cameron, who is a submersible designer himself and has designed vessels that can dive to depths three times deeper than where the Titanic rests, called the carbon fiber construction of the Titan as “fundamentally flawed.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the five passengers killed on the submersible, had previously defended the decision to manufacture the Titan with the material, saying he believed a sub made with carbon fiber would have a better strength-to-buoyancy ratio than titanium.
Cameron said he is especially surprised how the modern-day tragedy unfolded, given how much diving occurs all over the world with no incident.
The safety global standard for submersibles is the “gold standard,” especially given that no one has ever died in a submersible until now, Cameron said. While there were some accidents in the 1960s, there had been no major incidents since, and standards have improved drastically since then, he added.
The Russian submersibles that Cameron traveled on to see the Titanic were built with “very well understood design methodologies” and were operated by pilots with “flawless operating record,” Cameron said, adding that he always had “great confidence” in those vessels, despite the hostile environment surrounding the Titanic.
Other deep-diving environments, which may contain sea life and other organisms but are mostly open, do not present the same dangers as the shipwreck site of the Titanic, which presents ample opportunity for a submersible to become entangled, Cameron said.
Cameron described an eight to 10-story structure with overhanging metal — essentially a “twisted mess.”
However, since Cameron always dove with a two-sub system, in which another sub is underwater at tandem, he felt assured that if they did get stuck, there would be life support, communication and power.
“We always felt that we were pretty safe ground,” he said.
Chris Goldfinger, marine geologist at Oregon State University who has been on at least two dozen deep-sea dives in the Pacific Ocean, also compared the sinking of the Titanic to the implosion of the Titan, describing the latter to ABC News as an “underprepared vehicle.”
The Titan, operated by OceanGate, a privately held company that provides crewed submersible assets and expertise for commercial, research and military applications, did not have another submersible in the area or the amount of backup systems that other vessels utilize, Goldfinger said.
Members of the deep-diving community have been ringing alarm bells about the safety measures for the Titan for some time, Cameron said.
“This is a mature art, and many people in the community were very concerned about this sub,” he said. “And a number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that needed to be certified, and so on.”
In 2018, a former OceanGate employee alleged in a counterclaim lawsuit that he was fired for raising concerns about quality control and testing of potential flaws in the experimental submersible. OceanGate had initially sued the engineer and submarine pilot, alleging breach of contract, fraud, and misappropriation of trade secrets – all claims he denied.
The dispute was settled out of court. OceanGate has not made any statements regarding the safety of the Titan since the search for the missing submersible began on Sunday.
In a statement in 2021, OceanGate said, “Titan was built and designed in consultation with expert engineers and manufacturers, and includes multiple, redundant safety systems.”
Most submersibles have “multiple ways to self-rescue,” such as the ability to detach the sphere holding the passengers from the rest of the ship, which then allows it to float to the surface.” The Titan did not have “nearly that much redundancy and self-rescue capability,” he said.
“The same sort of classic thing that got the Titanic into trouble in the first place was overconfidence in yourself and overconfidence in an underprepared vehicle,” Goldfinger said.
Five people were aboard the Titan when it took its final dive: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, British billionaire Hamish Harding and celebrated Titanic researcher and former commander in the French navy, Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Through their shared passion, Cameron was friends with Nargeolet for 25 years, calling him by his nickname “P.H.” when referring to the five victims who lost their lives on the submersible.
Nargeolet was a “French legendary submersible dive pilot,” Cameron said, describing the diving community as “small.”
On Thursday, OceanGate issued a statement that all five passengers had perished.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the statement continued. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
(NEW YORK) — Lorraine Jessop’s three youngest children – Nathan, Summer, and Benjamin – have been missing since Feb. 4, 2023. According to court documents, they ran away.
“I checked on them at midnight,” Jessop, 42, told ABC News. “And my daughter was awake. And I thought, ‘That’s odd.'”
“At 5 in the morning, I awoke to a cold house because the front door was wide open and the kids were gone,” Jessop continued. “It was horrifying.”
But Jessop doesn’t believe it’s that simple, nor does she believe her children’s disappearance is an isolated incident. She is an ex-member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the polygamist breakaway offshoot of Mormonism. And there are three other mothers whose children have also disappeared – eight children in total, one as young as 12.
“I feel like that either someone took it upon themself or were told by church authorities to gather up these children,” Jessop said to ABC News in an interview for “Impact x Nightline” now streaming on Hulu.
Another mother, Elizabeth Roundy, 49, agrees. She believes her daughter Elintra, who ran away on January 1, 2023, was told how to run away.
“I am positive that FLDS are hiding Elintra,” Roundy said.
The church is best known for its prophet – Warren Jeffs – who was convicted in 2011 to life in prison for sexually assaulting girls as young as 12. But he remains the church’s prophet from behind bars, according to experts and former members that ABC News spoke with.
Last year, experts say Jeffs began to release new revelations, or prophecies, which ABC News has obtained, including one last June that calls for children of ex-members to come back into the fold, and another in August calling for members of the FLDS to die in the next 5-1/2 years in order to reach heaven.
Experts of the FLDS church, as well as the mothers of the eight missing children, fear an event similar to Jonestown, when more than 900 people died in a murder-suicide orchestrated in 1978 by Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple cult.
“And so you think some of those followers would be prepared to lay down their lives for their beliefs?” Juju Chang, Co-Anchor of ABC News’ “Nightline,” asked Jessop.
“Oh, yes,” Jessop answered. “I think that I was prepared to lay down my life.”
“And they would lay down the lives of children?” Chang asked.
“Oh, yes,” Jessop said.
HISTORY OF THE FLDS
The FLDS was founded more than 130 years ago after polygamy was outlawed in the Mormon Church. Its current prophet, Warren Jeffs, is a 67-year-old convicted pedophile who had approximately 80 wives, many of them underage, according to experts.
These mothers of the missing children – Lorraine Jessop, Mirinda Johnson, Elizabeth Roundy, and Sarah Johnson – all grew up in the FLDS, and up until they left the church believed Warren Jeffs was the prophet.
“Warren was God to us,” Jessop remembered.
In this sect, women are viewed as second-class and subservient to men. Children are home-schooled and are often sent to live with families different from their birth parents. Their lives are completely different than that of the modern world. Warren Jeffs released revelations telling members to live without phones, the internet, and even toys, experts and former members told ABC News. These communities often live in remote border towns, some even on secure compounds.
“Growing up, it was our purpose… to be married,” Sarah Johnson said. “I decided in the very beginning that I was going to be the most obedient, the most perfect wife I could be.”
She says she was betrothed at 17 to a man 25 years her elder. One of her four sister-wives was her biological sister and, among them, they had more than 30 children.
Johnson’s son, Salome, has been missing the longest. He ran away on March 9, 2021.
One child, who went missing last year, has since been found. Warren Jeffs’ nephew, Heber Jeffs, was charged last December with kidnapping his 10-year-old niece, whose parents had left the FLDS. He says he raised the girl since she was young. The charging court documents allege that Heber followed his uncle’s prophecies and directives, one of which called for children of ex-members to come back to the church.
Heber has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of ‘custodial interference’ and his attorney denied that the recent revelations influenced his actions. The 10-year-old girl has been reunited with her parents.
AN ‘APOSTATE’
These mothers have another key trait in common – they have all left the fundamentalist church. But when someone leaves, the community labels them an ‘apostate’ – the scarlet letter of the FLDS.
“When you leave, you’re considered an apostate, and are treated severely by the people who remain in the church,” said Roger Hoole, an attorney who represents some of these mothers. “It’s often a very long process before somebody leaves, and then it’s a long process before they emotionally are able to make the real adjustment. It’s not something that’s done overnight.”
Leaving the church can simultaneously be a real chance at freedom, but also a terrifying experience, these mothers told ABC News.
“It’s like jumping off of a cliff and not knowing if your parachute’s going to open, if you even have one on,” Sarah Johnson said of leaving the sect. “Just knowing that taking that jump is better than staying where you’re standing.”
But when Lorraine Jessop left, she felt differently.
“I felt like I was gonna burn in hell,” Jessop said.
Because of their ‘apostate’ label, these mothers’ children believed they were corrupt and dangerous, and out of fear shouldn’t be living with them, the moms told ABC News. To live with their non-FLDS mothers would mean to leave the only life they’ve ever known, they added, and that’s why each mom believes their child ran away.
“Our concern is, how do they run away by themselves?” Hoole said. “Are they being helped? Are we seeing a pattern here?”‘
The FLDS has a long history of hiding and harboring people, experts say. In the past, they’ve used a network they call “houses of hiding,” which is the same network that kept Warren Jeffs hidden for two years even as he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
REVELATIONS
But what these mothers say terrifies them the most is that if their children ran back to the church, they could be facing incredible danger from the prophecies that have been released by Warren Jeffs.
“In the FLDS, the children are raised to believe that the prophet can do no wrong,” Hoole explained. “And the adults that are in the group believe the prophet can do no wrong.”
“So if this revelation is accurate, and it is believed to be accurate by the FLDS people, and if Warren Jeffs were to command people to be translated, in other words, die, so that they could go to heaven — the faithful FLDS may well do that,” Hoole continued. The revelation, which was released last August, called for FLDS members to be ‘translated’ to heaven in the next 5-1/2 years.
“And translated to heaven in the Mormon context means you become immortal, you go to heaven,” Hoole explained. “But the problem is, and this is what the revelation says, the problem is you have to die first.”
The former police chief of Salt Lake City Chris Burbank fears the worst could be possible.
“I think Warren Jeffs’ influence over the FLDS community is so significant that it’s not unrealistic to believe his followers would follow him down the road of a mass suicide event,” Burbank said.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
“How, in the United States of America, could a religion exist where the belief is that children will be translated, in other words, have to die and go to heaven within five years?” Hoole asked.
Utah was founded by pioneers seeking religious freedom, according to Burbank. He says there’s a long history in Utah that believes citizens should be able to practice whatever religion they want.
“I think that’s part of the reason it took so long for the state to take any action in the first place a number of years ago, because of this notion of religious freedom,” Burbank said, speaking about the 2008 YFZ Ranch raid and the civil rights investigation into the FLDS.
Burbank thinks that stigma might continue today.
“Law enforcement is leery of these cases,” Burbank said. “I think there is a stigma attached to investigating or intruding upon freedom of religion.”
“And I’m a firm believer in the ability to practice your religion free from the influence of the government,” Burbank said. “But when your religious practice then endangers children, we have to draw a line there.”
ABC News reached out to the FBI, and officials declined to comment on whether there was an investigation into these missing children.
ABC News also reached out to each individual law enforcement agency handling the cases of the eight missing children, and they all confirmed they remain active and open cases.
ABC News attempted to reach the FLDS church through Helaman Jeffs, the son of Warren Jeffs, who has been issuing his father’s revelations. ABC News did not receive a response.
MOTHERS’ LOVE
These mothers say they will keep searching for their children. When asked what they would say to their missing children if they were to see them, each mother responded with an answer of love.
“Well, first I would get up and I would give ’em a great big hug,” Mirinda Johnson said. “And then I would probably [say], ‘Why’d you do that to me?'”
Johnson’s children have been missing since October 29, 2022 – more than 230 days.
“I would say, ‘Elintra, I love you so much. And I miss you terribly, more than I can say. And I’m worried about your safety,” Elizabeth Roundy told ABC News. “Please come home.'”
Roundy’s daughter has been missing since January 1, 2023 – more than 170 days.
“True love is unconditional,” Jessop said. “I love you regardless of what you wear, what you believe. God gave you to me as children. God appointed me as your mother…I love you with a mother’s love that’s stronger than anything you could imagine.”
Lorraine Jessop’s three kids have been missing since February 4, 2023 – over 130 days.
“I want him to know that nothing has changed since the last time that we hugged or spoke to each other,” Sarah Johnson said. “I’m always going to love you, and there’s so much that I want to teach you.”
Sarah’s son has been missing since March 9, 2021 – more than 830 days.
“I feel a little bit crazy sometimes,” Johnson finished. “But every time I drive down the road if I see a child or a boy that looks like he could be about his age, or size, I just have to look ’em in the face.”
ABC News’ Karin Weinberg, Laura Coburn, Zoe Chevalier, and Ashley Schwartz-Lavares contributed to this report.
(VILLA RICA, Ga.) — A police department in Georgia is apologizing after posting now-deleted footage showed several white participants in a handgun training course shooting a photo of a Black man for target practice. The footage has sparked outrage among some in the community.
A representative from the police department told ABC News that the human images will no longer be used for civilian target practice following the outrage but the images will continue to be used for law enforcement training per law enforcement training standards.
Footage posted online by the Villa Rica Police Department, captured by ABC affiliate WSB-TV before their deletion, show only images of a Black man being used by civilian class participants, though the department said that the images are one of “various ethnic groups” included in the target practice photos.
Online commenters critiqued the apparent sole use of images with a Black male.
“Hating and being afraid of [Black] people is taught at home, at police training and apparently random handgun classes,” read one comment on the police department’s Facebook post.
Members of the Carroll County branch of the NAACP criticized the department’s use of photos as targets.
“These types of targets have been used by other police departments within the U.S. and have been deemed racially inappropriate and unacceptable,” NAACP Carroll County President Dominique Conteh said in an online statement.
NAACP Carroll County did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
“I don’t think you should have any human being as a target whether they are Black, white, Asian,” Conteh said in a comment to a local Fox affiliate.
Villa Rica Mayor Gil McDougal ordered the images to be removed from social media and for an independent firm to investigate the incident, according to WSB-TV.
Conteh said in the statement she has requested a meeting with the department and leadership to discuss the incident.
Diversity training would give more insight “as to the reasoning as to why those targets are ‘unacceptable and deemed racist,'” Conteh said in the statement.
“It was never our intention to be insensitive, inflammatory, or offensive to anyone,” the police department said in an online statement.
The department said it “strives to be conscious of how our relationship with our community members has a direct impact on our effectiveness within the community we serve.”
(NEW YORK) — A submersible carrying five people while on a trip to the Titanic wreckage suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said at a press conference on Thursday.
A remote-operated vehicle found debris from the OceanGate Titan submersible’s tail-cone approximately 1,600 feet from the ship, Mauger said.
A search and rescue team found several additional pieces of debris that indicated they belonged to the Titan, the missing vessel that drew international attention in recent days, Mauger said.
It remains “too early to tell” when the implosion took place, but the search and rescue team will continue to collect information, Mauger added.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment on the seafloor,” Mauger said. “This is something that happened in a remote portion of the ocean.”
In a statement, OceanGate confirmed the deaths of all five passengers on board.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the company said. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.”
What type of debris did the search and rescue effort find?
The search and rescue team identified two fields of debris in an area surrounding the bow of the sunken Titanic, Mauger said, describing them as one large field of debris and one small field.
The discovered objects included “five different major pieces of debris” that identified the materials as consistent with the Titan, undersea expert Paul Hankin said at the press conference.
The debris included a nose cone and one end of the pressure hull, Hankin said.
“We’ve continued to map the debris field,” Hankin said. “We’ll do the best we can to fully map it out.”
What does “catastrophic implosion” mean?
Titan is a carbon fiber submersible that can travel as far as 4,000 meters below sea level, the OceanGate website says.
At the depth of the Titanic, which sits 3,800 meters below sea level, the pressure reaches a level 380 times the atmospheric pressure on the earth’s surface, Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, said in a blog post on Tuesday.
A fault or failure in the hull of Titan could lead to an implosion, as the vessel gives way to the high pressure of the deep sea, Williams said.
The implosion of a submersible delivers immense force, oceanographer Bob Ballard told ABC News on Thursday.
“I don’t think people can appreciate the amazing energy involved in the destructive process of an implosion,” Ballard said. “It just takes out and literally shreds everything.”
“It’s extremely powerful,” he added.
Are there previous examples of a submersible imploding?
A U.S. nuclear submarine, called Thresher, imploded during a deep-sea dive 220 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a U.S. Navy inquiry showed.
The implosion left 129 sailors dead.
More recently, in 2014, the unmanned Nereus submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion” while traveling at a depth of 9,990 meters in the Kermadec Trench northeast of New Zealand, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said soon afterward in a statement.
At the time of implosion, Nereus faced pressure of an estimated 6,000 pounds per square inch, WHOI said.
The team of researchers tracking Nereus found “spotted pieces of debris floating on the sea surface” that were later identified as part of the submersible, WHOI said.
Researchers lost contact with Nereus seven hours into a nine-hour mission, WHOI added.
File image of the Titan submersible prior to commence diving. (Ocean Gate)
(NEW YORK) — The search is intensifying for a submersible carrying five people that vanished while on a tour of the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The 21-foot deep-sea vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after submerging on Sunday morning with a 96-hour oxygen supply. That amount of breathable air is forecast to run out on Thursday morning, according to the United States Coast Guard, which is coordinating the search and rescue efforts.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jun 22, 6:11 PM EDT
Navy detected sound of the implosion on Sunday: Official
A senior U.S. Navy official confirmed to ABC News that a secret underwater acoustic detection system heard on Sunday what was likely the implosion of the Titan submersible.
“The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” the official told ABC News in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
Separately, a U.S. defense official said an analysis of the “banging” noises picked up by sonar buoys were not from the missing submersible but were either natural ocean sounds, biological noises or noises associated with the surface response vessels.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 22, 6:10 PM EDT
Hamish Harding remembered as ‘passionate explorer’
Hamish Harding, a British businessman who was among the five people killed in the Titan implosion, was remembered as a “passionate explorer” by his loved ones.
“Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply,” a statement sent on behalf of his family and Action Aviation, the company he chaired, said. “To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend.”
“He was one of a kind and we adored him. He was a passionate explorer — whatever the terrain — who lived his life for his family, his business and for the next adventure,” the statement continued. “What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved.”
-ABC News’ Mark Guarino
Jun 22, 5:35 PM EDT
Explorer Robert Ballard on ‘extremely powerful’ implosion
Explorer Robert Ballard, who was on the 1985 expedition that discovered the Titanic wreckage and has made many dives since, reacted to news of the implosion with ABC News on Thursday.
“It’s very tragic what happened, I know the people that passed away,” he said, adding that he’s known OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the vessel, for 20 years. “I know this was his dream, so my heart goes out to him and his family and the families of all the people who lost loved ones.”
Ballard surmised the crew likely experienced difficulties and began to drop weights to ascend to the surface but “never made it.”
“If you’re on your way up and you’re buoyant and you don’t make it, it’s a catastrophic implosion,” he said.
“I don’t think people can appreciate the amazing energy involved in the destructive process of an implosion,” Ballard continued. “It just takes and literally shreds everything. So it’s extremely powerful.”
Jun 22, 5:04 PM EDT
Explorers Club remembers lost crew
The Explorers Club reacted to news of the submersible’s implosion, saying in a letter to members on Thursday: “Our hearts are broken.”
President Richard Garriott de Cayeux noted that two of the passengers lost in the implosion — Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet — were members of the Explorers Club, while OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was a friend of the society who had conducted lectures at its headquarters.
“Hamish Harding is a dear friend to me personally and to The Explorers Club,” Garriott de Cayeux said. “He holds several world records and has continued to push dragons off maps both in person and through supporting expeditions and worthy causes.”
Nargeolet was “one of the foremost experts on submersible expeditions to the Titanic,” Garriott de Cayeux said.
“They were both drawn to explore, like so many of us, and did so in the name of meaningful science for the betterment of mankind,” he continued. “They pushed themselves in their entrepreneurial pursuits as they did in exploration.”
Jun 22, 4:37 PM EDT
James Cameron calls OceanGate’s carbon-fiber hull ‘fundamentally flawed’
In reacting to news of the OceanGate submersible implosion, “Titanic” director James Cameron told ABC News that he was “struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field.”
Cameron, who has built his own submersible, was critical of OceanGate’s use of a carbon-fiber hull, calling it “fundamentally flawed.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the five passengers killed on the submersible, had previously said he believed a sub made with carbon fiber would have a better strength-to-buoyancy ratio than titanium.
Jun 22, 3:59 PM EDT
James Cameron reacts to implosion: ‘Quite surreal’
“Titanic” director James Cameron, who has explored the wreckage site himself, called the implosion “quite surreal” and noted that one of the passengers killed, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, was a friend of his.
“For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process,” Cameron told ABC News Thursday.
Jun 22, 3:11 PM EDT
Debris consistent with ‘catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber’
Coast Guard officials said a remote-operated vehicle found the tail cone of the Titan submersible about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic Thursday morning.
Additional debris found was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, said during a press briefing.
The passengers’ families were immediately notified.
Five major pieces of debris were found, including the nose cone, officials said.
The debris indicates there was a “catastrophic implosion” of the vessel, Mauger said.
It’s too early to tell when the implosion occurred, officials said.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor,” Mauger said.
Jun 22, 2:52 PM EDT
All lives believed to be lost: OceanGate
All five aboard the missing submersible are believed to be lost amid a search for the vessel, OceanGate said.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the statement continued. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
Jun 22, 1:39 PM EDT
Canadian assets on scene for assistance
A Royal Canadian Navy ship HMCS Glace Bay has been on scene since about 8 a.m. ET Thursday morning. The ship provides a medical team specializing in dive medicine and a six-person mobile hyperbaric recompression chamber, according to officials.
Canadian Coast Guard ships John Cabot, Ann Harvey and Terry Fox are on scene and ready to provide rescue equipment and personnel should assistance be required. A Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora aircraft is also maintaining continuous on-scene support with additional aircrews and assets, according to officials.
-ABC News’ Luke Barr
Jun 22, 12:10 PM EDT
‘Debris field’ discovered within search area, US Coast Guard says
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter late Thursday morning that “a debris field was discovered within the search area by” a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) “near the Titanic” wreckage.
“Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information,” the U.S. Coast Guard tweeted.
The Coast Guard is set to hold a briefing on the findings from the Horizon Arctic’s ROV at 3 p.m. ET.
Jun 22, 10:58 AM EDT
Crew members could survive for ‘hours’ after airtank depleted, doctor says
Despite their onboard oxygen tank expected to be depleted sometime Thursday morning, one doctor says they may have more time if the passengers are still alive. He estimates the five people aboard the lost Titanic tourist sub could survive for 10 to 20 hours with air still circulating through the experimental capsule.
Dr. Richard Moon, a professor of anesthesiology at Duke University, said that despite conditions being dire, those aboard the OceanGate Expedition’s submersible could extend the oxygen available after its tank is depleted by staying calm and moving as little as possible.
“The actual amount of time that they have is unpredictable, but it’s probably less than 24 hours after the final oxygen in the tank is depleted,” Moon, director of the Duke Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology, told ABC News.
Jun 22, 10:50 AM EDT
French ROV enters water in search area
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter on Thursday morning that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed by the French vessel L’Atalante has entered the water in the search area.
The U.S. Coast Guard also gave an update on the conditions at sea, saying winds were at 14 mph with gusts up to 19 mph, swells were 4 to 5 feet and the air temperature was 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Jun 22, 7:19 AM EDT
Canadian ROV begins search on sea floor
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter early Thursday that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed by the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic has reached the sea floor, beginning its search for the missing submersible.
Meanwhile, the French vessel L’Atalante is preparing its ROV to enter the water in the search area, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Jun 22, 6:29 AM EDT
Search becomes dire as time runs out
Time is running out as rescuers race to locate and save five people trapped in a submersible that vanished during a tour of the Titanic wreckage on Sunday morning.
The deep-sea vessel submerged at 8 a.m. ET on Sunday with a 96-hour oxygen supply, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. That amount of breathable air is forecast to run out on Thursday morning.
The search and rescue mission remains ongoing.
Jun 22, 12:21 AM EDT
Wife of missing OceanGate CEO is great-great-granddaughter of couple who died on Titanic: NYT
The New York Times traced the lineage of Wendy Rush, wife of missing OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, and found that she’s the great-great-granddaughter of a couple who died on the Titanic, Isidor and Ida Straus.
The executive director of the Straus Historical Society told ABC News that The Times article, which cites archival records, is largely correct with regard to Wendy Weil Rush’s heritage.
Jun 21, 5:44 PM EDT
US Navy crane in Newfoundland but awaiting ship
A U.S. Navy portable crane system capable of bringing up items from as deep as 20,000 feet has arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, but is waiting to be welded onto a chartered ship to take it to the search area for the missing submersible, according to a U.S. Navy official.
The Navy has not yet contracted a ship for the salvage system, known as Fly Away Deep Ocean Salvage System or FADOSS, the official told reporters Wednesday. Once the ship is contracted, Navy teams will spend approximately 24 hours working around the clock to weld the system aboard the ship before it can leave port, the official said.
FADOSS is the salvage system the U.S. Navy uses for all of its deep-water recoveries. Last year, it was able to bring up an F/A-18 aircraft that had fallen into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 21, 2:56 PM EDT
Head of Horizon Maritime, which owns the Polar Prince boat, holding out hope
The co-founder and Board chair of Horizon Maritime, the company that owns the Polar Prince boat that took the Titan submersible out to sea, is speaking out.
“We have been supporting the Titanic expeditions for several years,” Sean Leet said, calling the Polar Prince “an iconic former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker that has been upgraded with advanced technology.”
“All protocols were followed” for the submersible’s mission, he said at a news conference Wednesday, calling the missing sub an “unprecedented” situation.
Equipment heading to search site can reach the depths of the submersible and potentially take it to the surface, he said.
“We wish to thank everyone involved in this rescue mission, especially the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards, the organizations that have made their marina assets available including the French government … [and] the many private companies that have dropped everything at a moment’s notice,” Leet said.
“Our thoughts and focus remain with the crew of the Titan and their families,” he said.
Leet said he is holding out hope that the five-person crew will be brought home safely.
“We’ll continue to hold out hope until the very end,” he said.
Jun 21, 1:34 PM EDT
Coast Guard searching in area where noise was detected
As crews scour the Atlantic for the missing submersible, the Coast Guard said it’s searching in the area where a noise was detected.
The unidentified noise was detected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
The data on the noise was sent to the U.S. Navy to be examined, he said.
“We have to remain optimistic and hopeful when we’re in a search and rescue mission,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator, said at a news conference Wednesday.
The five crew members submerged underwater Sunday morning with about 96 hours of oxygen available to them. That oxygen is forecast to run out Thursday morning.
When asked about the search becoming a recovery mission, Frederick said Wednesday, “We’re not there yet.”
Jun 21, 1:21 PM EDT
Coast Guard searching in area where noise was detected
As crews scour the Atlantic for the missing submersible, the Coast Guard said it’s searching in the area where a noise was detected.
The unidentified noise was detected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
“We have to remain optimistic and hopeful when we’re in a search and rescue mission,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator, said at a news conference Wednesday.
The five crew members submerged underwater Sunday morning with about 96 hours of oxygen available to them. That oxygen is forecast to run out Thursday morning.
When asked about the search becoming a recovery mission, Frederick said Wednesday, “We’re not there yet.”
Jun 21, 12:56 PM EDT
Canada sends ship with advanced, deep sonar
One of the ships the Canadian Coast Guard sent to the rescue effort, the John Cabot, is equipped with advanced, deep sonar, said Joyce Murray, minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard.
“We’ve sent so many assets to the search team to help,” Murray said. “Authorities still have hope in the mission.”
-ABC News’ Will Gretsky
Jun 21, 12:47 PM EDT
Former passenger says his sub lost contact with host ship on all 4 trips
Mike Reiss, who has done four, 10-hour dives with OceanGate, including one to the Titanic, told ABC News his sub lost contact with the host ship on every dive.
“Every time they lost communication — that seems to be just something baked into the system,” he said.
With no GPS, Reiss said it took his crew three hours to find the Titanic despite landing just 500 yards from the ship.
Reiss said he signed “a waiver that mentions death three times on the first page.”
“It is always in the back of your head that this is dangerous, and any small problem will turn into a major catastrophe,” he said.
He said the submersible is built simply and is “just propelled by two fans on the outside.”
“Even I was able to steer and navigate the sub for a while,” he noted.
Reiss said his greatest fear was that the sub wouldn’t be able to release the weights that force it to submerge once it was time to rise to the surface.
-ABC News’ Gio Benitez and Sam Sweeney
Jun 21, 9:00 AM EDT
Would-be crew member of missing sub speaks out
Digital marketing tycoon Chris Brown originally planned to go on Sunday’s submersible tour of the Titanic wreckage but withdrew due to safety concerns. His friend, Hamish Harding, is among those aboard the missing vessel.
Brown, who described himself as a “modern day adventurer,” admitted that he knew “very little” about the tour operator, OceanGate Expeditions, prior to signing up. But he said the deep-sea trip initially sounded “like a great idea.”
“The Titanic’s obviously an iconic wreck,” Brown told ABC News’ Michael Strahan during an interview Wednesday on Good Morning America.
“OceanGate had put forward this program to go down and do a 3D scan of the wreck,” he added. “So it’s a chance for an expedition, exploration and adding a bit of science into the situation.”
Brown said safety concerns ultimately led him to pull out of the trip, but he declined to go into detail.
“I’m not really sure that this is the time to be going into that sort of thing,” he added. “I think that the focus right now has to be on trying to rescue these people. It’s not fair on the families and friends to be making speculation about what might’ve happened or how it happened at this point.”
Brown said he feels “no” apprehension about joining similar projects in the future but noted that it’s important to “think about all the risks.”
“If you don’t have an appetite for those risks, then you might not go ahead,” he said. “You may try and mitigate those by bringing in some expertise from outside. You might have other risks or dangers that could be mitigated by changing the time of when you go out there.”
Jun 21, 7:33 AM EDT
New details emerge about how the missing sub navigated the ocean
The submersible that was reported missing while on a tour of the underwater wreckage of the Titanic is an unorthodox vessel with a relatively unproven history, according to company press materials and experts familiar with underwater vehicles.
News of the vessel’s disappearance prompted a flurry of interest in the company OceanGate Expeditions and its deep-sea submersible called the Titan.
The company’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, who is one of the five people aboard the missing vessel, manned the Titan’s first “validation dive” to 4,000 meters in 2018, according to the company. The company then began offering tourists the opportunity to dive to the depths of the Titanic in the following years, selling tickets for the 2023 journey for $250,000.
Jun 21, 6:57 AM EDT
‘Banging’ picked up by sonar in search area, source says
A source familiar confirmed to ABC News that there were reports of “banging” that were picked up by sonar in the search area on Tuesday morning, but nothing has yet been found.
The U.S. Coast Guard had said early Wednesday that an aircraft with sonar capability “detected underwater noises in the search area,” but remotely operated vehicles were unable to find the origin of the sound.
Jun 21, 6:34 AM EDT
Titanic mapping company ‘fully mobilized’ to help
Magellan, an international exploration company that digitally mapped the Titanic wreckage last year, said Wednesday that it is “ready to support” the search for the missing submersible and is “fully mobilized to help.”
The U.K.-based company told ABC News that it was contacted by the submersible’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions, early Monday and “immediately offered our knowledge of the specific site and also our expertise operating at depth considerably in advance of what is required for this incident.”
“We have been working full-time with U.K. and U.S. agencies to secure the necessary air support to move our specialist equipment and support crew,” Magellan said in a statement.
When asked for comment about media reports that U.S. authorities have failed to give Magellan the necessary permits to participate in the search, the company told ABC News it “does not not wish to comment on any specific media report.”
Jun 21, 12:34 AM EDT
USCG: Canadian aircraft detected ‘underwater noises’ but search ‘yielded negative results’
“Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area,” the U.S. Coast Guard tweeted early Wednesday morning. “As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue.”
The data from the P-3 has been shared with U.S. Navy experts for further analysis, the Coast Guard added.
Jun 21, 12:34 AM EDT
Lawsuit alleged flaws with Titanic sub now missing
A former employee of OceanGate alleged in a 2018 counterclaim lawsuit that he was fired for raising concerns about quality control and testing of potential flaws in the same experimental submersible that went missing this week.
David Lochridge, an engineer and submarine pilot, claimed in his counterclaim against OceanGate that he was hired in 2015 by the Everett, Washington, company to ensure the safety of all crew and clients during the submersible and surface operations of the vessel called Titan. But when he expressed concerns about the design and testing of the minisub’s hull, he said he was terminated by the company.
OceanGate had initially sued Lochridge alleging, among other things, breach of contract, fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets — all claims he denied.
In its lawsuit, OceanGate accused Lochridge of breaching his contract by discussing the company’s confidential information with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration “when he filed a false report claiming that he was discharged in retaliation for being a whistleblower.”
Jun 20, 10:15 PM EDT
Latest Coast Guard bulletin spells out timeline for missing sub search
The U.S. Coast Guard sent out its latest release Tuesday night on the search for the missing submersible at the Titanic crash site.
According to the latest release:
Sunday, June 18, 8 a.m. ET: Submersible launches, supposed to resurface at 3 p.m., but an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, it loses contact.
Sunday, June 18, 5:40 p.m. ET: Coast Guard receives report of overdue submersible.
Monday, June 19: Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and C-130 Hercules aircraft, as well as a Canadian P8 aircraft equipped with underwater sonar capability, search for the missing submersible, according to a previous release.
Tuesday, June 20, 7 a.m. ET: Bahamian research vessel Deep Energy arrives.
Tuesday, June 20, 4 p.m. ET: C-130 crew from Air National Guard 106th arrives.
Jun 20, 8:33 PM EDT
Experts expressed Titan safety concerns in 2018 letter
Members of a committee specializing in submersibles expressed “unanimous concern regarding the development” of Titan in a 2018 letter addressed to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who is one of the passengers aboard the missing vessel.
The letter was obtained by The New York Times and was later authenticated by ABC News.
The letter warned of possible “catastrophic” problems with Titan’s development that could have “serious consequences for everyone in the industry.” The letter goes on to say that OceanGate’s safety claims were “misleading to the public” and insisted Titan be reviewed by a third-party organization.
The letter, which was addressed from the Marine Technology Society, was never approved to be sent to OceanGate though was quickly leaked to its CEO, according to committee chair William Kohnen.
“The letter did represent in 2018 the consensus by many people in the industry that they were not considering following the standard safety protocols and designs that the industry uses,” Kohnen told ABC News.
Though he wishes it was not leaked at the time, nor now to The New York Times, Kohnen said he stands by the letter and its warnings.
“The company had indicated that their state of innovation was beyond, beyond what was allowable within the regulatory standards we have today and that they would proceed without certification,” Kohnen said. “That worried a number of people in the industry.”
Kohnen acknowledged that OceanGate did “heed” some of the comments made in the 2018 letter.
-ABC News’ Amanda Maile and Victor Ordoñez
Jun 20, 6:02 PM EDT
NASA weighs in on missing submersible
NASA released a statement Tuesday on the Titan, saying it remains “hopeful the crew will be found unharmed.”
“NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center had a Space Act Agreement with OceanGate, and consulted on materials and manufacturing processes for the submersible. NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities,” the agency said.
-ABC News’ Gina Sunseri
Jun 20, 6:17 PM EDT
Search teams have covered 7,600 square miles
Search and rescue teams have now covered 7,600 square miles — an area bigger than the state of Connecticut — as they scour the ocean for the missing submersible, Coast Guard officials said.
A grid depicting the expanding search area is expected Tuesday night, according to a public information affairs lieutenant for the First District of the U.S. Coast Guard.
-ABC News’ Miles Cohen
Jun 20, 3:09 PM EDT
US Navy sending salvage experts, equipment to help with submersible
The U.S. Navy said it’s sending to the search site experts and equipment “designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects.”
The equipment, which can lift up to 60,000 pounds, and the experts will arrive in Canada Tuesday night, the Navy said.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said earlier Tuesday that the Navy was”on standby” to help with the search for the missing submersible, because the Navy has “some deep-water capabilities that the Coast Guard wouldn’t necessarily have.”
President Joe Biden is “watching events closely,” Kirby said, adding that Biden and the White House offer their thoughts “to the crew onboard, as well as to the — what is no doubt — worried family members back on shore.”
Jun 20, 1:24 PM EDT
3 Air Force C-17’s transporting equipment to Newfoundland
Three U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft will be transporting commercial equipment from Buffalo, New York, to Newfoundland, Canada, to help with the search efforts, according to a U.S. official.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Jun 20, 1:16 PM EDT
Search area larger than Connecticut, about 41 hours of oxygen left
Efforts to locate the missing submersible are ongoing, and the “complex” search covers an area larger than the state of Connecticut, Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said at a news conference Tuesday.
Crews are scouring the ocean 900 miles east of Cape Cod and 400 miles south of St. John’s, Canada, he said.
The missing five-person crew on the submersible has about 41 hours of oxygen left, Frederick noted.
“We will do everything in our power to effect a rescue,” Frederick said.
“We have a group of our nation’s best experts,” he said, and once the sub is located, “those experts will be looking at what the next course of action is” to rescue the crew members.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the crew and their families and their loved ones,” Frederick added.
Jun 20, 12:58 PM EDT
Former ABC News correspondent recounts moment his sub was trapped in Titanic’s propeller
In 2000, Dr. Michael Guillen, then an ABC News correspondent, was filming from the wreck of the Titanic when his vessel became trapped in the propeller.
“When we collided with the propeller, and I started seeing those big chunks of metal raining down on us … the first reaction I had was, ‘This can’t be happening,'” he recalled to ABC News on Tuesday.
“We got caught by this underwater turn and just drove us right into the blades,” Guillen said.
“This voice came into my head and said, you know, ‘This is how it’s going to end for you,'” he recalled. “I’ll never forget those words.”
“I’m very aware of what these poor souls on board the ship the Titan are experiencing,” he said. “I am just heartbroken about it.”
Jun 20, 11:35 AM EDT
French sending assistance
At the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, a French ship named Atalante is diverting to the area of the missing submissive and should reach the area Wednesday night.
The ship has an exploration robot that can dive up to 4,000 meters, according to a spokesman for France’s Ifremer Institute.
Jun 20, 9:04 AM EDT
‘It’s a race against time’
Per Wimmer, an explorer and global financier, told ABC News he was “shocked” and “horrified” to hear of the missing submersible.
“It felt very personal. … I’ve been wanting to go down to the Titanic for more than a decade,” Wimmer said.
He estimated that there’s been between 150 and 200 missions to the Titanic.
There “are very, very few submersibles in the whole world that can go down to the depth of Titanic, which sits at 3,800 meters, or about 12,000 feet,” Wimmer said. “It’s very deep — most submersibles can go down to about 1,000 meters.”
“It’s a race against time, because there’s only 96 hours of oxygen on board. And after that, if you haven’t reached the surface, you starve of oxygen,” he said.
“Our best hope at the moment is that the safety mechanism will be activated,” he said. “It is supposed to be able to float to the surface, little by little, and then they can open the hatch and hopefully get out again. That is the only hope we have, because you do not have enough time to get another submersible that can go that deep.”
Jun 20, 8:19 AM EDT
What to know about the 5 people aboard the missing sub
Renowned explorers and a father-son duo were among the five people aboard a submersible that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday while touring the Titanic wreckage, ABC News has learned.
ABC News has confirmed and identified four of those on aboard as Hamish Harding, a British businessman, pilot and space tourist; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Titanic expert; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his son Suleman Dawood.
Jun 20, 7:48 AM EDT
US Coast Guard commander talks search for missing sub
The United States Coast Guard commander leading the search for a missing submersible off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, said Tuesday morning that crews in multiple aircraft have flown over an area of the Atlantic Ocean “roughly about the size of Connecticut” while “looking for any signs of surfacing.”
“As we continue on with the search, we’re expanding our capabilities to be able to search under the water as well,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, told ABC News’ Robin Roberts during an interview on Good Morning America.
A commercial vessel with remotely operated vehicles is now on scene that will allow rescuers to search underwater, according to Mauger.
“This is a complex case,” he added. “The Coast Guard doesn’t have all the resources to be able to affect this kind of rescue, although this is an area that’s within our search zone.”
In many cases, Mauger said, the Coast Guard’s role is to coordinate all of the assets and technical expertise that can be used in a search, in addition to operating aircraft or ships when necessary.
“In this particular case, we’ve established a unified command with the United States Navy, with the Canadian Armed Forces, with the Canadian Coast Guard and with the private operator OceanGate Expeditions to make sure that we understand what’s needed and deploy all available equipment to the scene that could be used to locate this submersible, whether it’s on the surface or down beneath the surface,” he said.
Crews have been working “around the clock” to locate the deep-sea vessel since it lost contact with its operator on Sunday morning, according to Mauger.
In the last 24 hours, a Canadian aircraft has been dropping sonar buoys into the water that can pick up sound the submersible may be emitting. Vessels that have the capability to listen with their own sonar equipment are also on scene, according to Mauger.
“If they are making sound, that’s certainly one of the ways that we’re going to use to locate them,” he said.
Jun 20, 6:18 AM EDT
Missing sub is believed to be deeper than NATO rescue capability
A tourist submersible that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday is believed to be at depths that greatly exceed the capabilities of the NATO Submarine Rescue System (NSRS), according to a spokesperson for the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense.
“As the host nation for NATO’s multinational submarine rescue capability, we continue to monitor the incident in the North Atlantic and will guide and assist in any response activity as appropriate,” the spokesperson told ABC News in a statement on Tuesday.
The U.K. has not been approached to offer assistance in the ongoing search for the deep-sea vessel off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, according to the spokesperson.
Initial reports indicate that the depths of water involved greatly exceed that which the NSRS team can safely operate — 610 meters for the NSRS submersible and 1,000 meters for the NSRS remotely operated vehicle, according to the spokesperson.
The NSRS is based at the home of the U.K. Royal Navy Submarine Service in HM Naval Base Clyde, the U.K. Royal Navy’s headquarters in Scotland. Introduced in 2006, the tri-national capability team can respond to a stricken submarine in rescuable water which is capable of mating with the NSRS submarine rescue vehicle, according to the spokesperson.
Jun 20, 5:03 AM EDT
Former Navy sub captain on rescue options
Rescuers racing against the clock to save the five people trapped in a tourist submersible nearly two miles deep in the Atlantic Ocean are facing major obstacles that could make saving the people onboard extremely difficult, according to a former U.S. Navy submarine commander.
Retired Capt. David Marquet told ABC News on Monday that this type of rescue operation is complicated because there aren’t nearby U.S. or Canadian underwater vessels that can go as deep as the Titanic wreckage, which sits 13,400 feet below the ocean’s surface. Also, the ocean is pitch black at that depth.
“The odds are against them,” Marquet said. “There’s a ship in Boston that has this ability to either lower cable and connect to it or have a claw. It’s still a thousand miles away.”
Even if a vessel was able to locate the submersible and lower a cable, it’s extremely difficult to safely navigate the waters and attach it, according to Marquet.
“You’ve got to get it exactly right,” he told ABC News. “It’s sort of like … getting one of those toys out of those arcade machines. In general, you miss.”
Rescuers do have one advantage, Marquet said, as weather conditions off the coast of Newfoundland are not rough and will not disturb any boat or vessel there.
Marquet added that if the five people aboard are still alive, they would be asked to sleep to conserve their oxygen.
“We would put the vast majority of the crew to sleep because that’s when you’re using the least amount of oxygen and you’re expelling the least amount of carbon dioxide,” he said.
Jun 20, 4:27 AM EDT
What to know about the missing sub
A submersible on a tour of the Titanic wreckage was reported overdue by its operator OceanGate Expeditions on Sunday, prompting the United States Coast Guard to launch a search and rescue effort for the 22-foot, 23,000-pound vessel.
Designed with life support to sustain five crew members for 96 hours, the submersible would need to be rescued in three days to save its five passengers, according to the Coast Guard.
Stockton Rush founded Washington-based OceanGate in 2009 to make deep-sea exploration more accessible to scientists and tourists. Fourteen years, more than 200 dives and three submersible designs later, the company now finds itself in a desperate search to recover the submersible carrying five people aboard that’s gone missing off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
OceanGate confirmed Monday it had lost contact with a submersible, saying in a statement: “We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families. We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
(EL PASO, Texas) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection saw right through a commercial refrigeration unit that, instead of being used to make ice cream, had been stuffed with more than 100 pounds of cocaine, officials said Thursday.
Customs officers in El Paso, Texas, seized 146 pounds of the narcotic after discovering it had been bundled up and hidden in the walls of the ice cream maker and then detected by X-ray technology at a federal border crossing on Monday, according to a CBP news release.
One official estimated the street value of the drugs at $1.2 million.
Authorities rely on X-ray technology to quickly inspect large volumes of commercial traffic through U.S. ports of entry. Officers are responsible for delicately balancing security concerns with the need to keep commercial trade flowing.
On Monday, officials took a closer look at a red pick-up truck crossing at the Bridge of the Americas, CBP said. When the X-ray revealed an abnormal image pattern, CBP relied on the help of a trained dog to sniff out the drugs. The cocaine was found in 56 tightly packed bundles.
A 43-year-old man, a Mexican national, was driving the truck and was sent to the custody of Texas police to face charges, according to CBP.
“The vast majority of commercial shipments CBP officers process pose little risk. However seizures like this remind us all that drugs can be concealed almost anywhere and that we must remain constantly vigilant,” acting CBP El Paso Port Director Luis Mejia said in a statement.
Imported products valued at billions of dollars are processed through U.S. ports of entry each day, according to CBP.
Additionally, more than half a million travelers arrive through land ports of entry on a daily basis.
With roughly 33,400 pounds seized so far this budget year, CBP is detecting less cocaine compared to last year. Unlike cannabis, cocaine and fentanyl can pack a deadly punch in smaller packages.
“The intelligence and investigative work being conducted by DHS Agencies and with our federal partners to disrupt the fentanyl supply chain is unprecedented,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
Over the past two years, the department seized more fentanyl than the previous five years, Mayorkas said.
The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced two new anti-fentanyl operations aimed at disrupting both the production supply chain and trafficking routes of the ultra-deadly synthetic opioid.
Ocean Gate / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — As the search-and-rescue efforts became a recovery mission Thursday, U.S. Coast Guard officials conceded they are facing a daunting investigation to determine what caused the Titan submersible to implode underwater near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five explorers aboard.
After searching for five days for the OceanGate Expedition vessel, Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger announced that a “catastrophic event” doomed the five men aboard the minisub.
Believed to have been killed in the undersea disaster were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, paying passengers billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, aviation tycoon Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a renowned expert on the Titanic.
“We immediately notified the families,” Mauger said at a news conference. “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire united command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families. I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time.”
Officials said the 21-foot-long Titan was found in pieces by a remotely operated vehicle on a smooth section of ocean floor more than 2 miles beneath the surface and 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, which crashed into an iceberg on April 15, 1912, in the North Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, killing an estimated 1,490 to 1,635 people aboard.
“This was an incredibly complex case and we’re still working to develop details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response,” Mauger said.
Five major pieces of the Titan, including its nose cone and pressure hull, were discovered by the ROV in a large debris field and a smaller debris field nearby, suggesting a major implosion had occurred, officials said.
Mauger said it remains unclear whether crews will be able to recover the bodies of the five people killed and how much of the vessel can be salvaged.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Mauger said.
He said two ROVs, one from France and the other from Canada, will remain at the site off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, to continue mapping the debris fields.
“We’ll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don’t have an answer for a prospect at this time,” Mauger said, referring to the recovery of the bodies.
Mauger said an investigation is underway to determine when the implosion happened on the Titan’s voyage to the Titanic.
The tourist expedition to the Titanic was launched at 8 a.m. on Sunday. The Titan’s companion surface ship lost contact with the explorers an hour and 45 minutes into the trip, Coast Guard officials said.
“We know that as we’ve been prosecuting this search over the course of the last 72 hours and beyond that we’ve had sonar buoys in the water nearly continuously and have not detected any catastrophic events where the sonar buoys have been in the water,” said Mauger, suggesting the implosion occurred at the outset of the voyage.
He said the Coast Guard and the British and French governments will keep investigating to answer “how, why and when this happened.”
“Those are questions that we will collect as much information as we can now while the governments are meeting and discussing what an investigation of this nature of casualty might look like,” Mauger said. “This is something that happened in a remote part of the ocean with people from different countries around the world and so it is a complex case to work through. But I’m confident that those questions will begin to get answers.”
He added, “Right now, our thoughts are with the families and making sure that they have an understanding as best as we can provide of what happened and begin to find some closure.”
A former employee of OceanGate alleged in a 2018 counterclaim lawsuit that he was fired for raising concerns about quality control and testing of potential flaws in the same experimental submersible that imploded.
David Lochridge, an engineer and submarine pilot, claimed in his counterclaim against OceanGate that he was hired in 2015 by the Everett, Washington, company to ensure the safety of all crew and clients during the submersible and surface operations of the vessel called Titan. Lochridge, according to the suit, raised concerns about the design and strength of the submersible’s hull, particularly that it was made of carbon fiber instead of a metallic composition.
But when he expressed concerns about the design and testing of the minisub’s hull, he said he was terminated by the company.
OceanGate had initially sued Lochridge alleging, among other things, breach of contract, fraud and misappropriation of trade secrets — all claims he denied. Both OceanGate’s lawsuit and Lochridge’s countersuit were settled out of court.
It remains unclear if any of the concerns that Lochridge raised were a factor in the Titan disaster.
(NEW YORK) — The company behind the lost Titanic tourist submersible exaggerated the details of the industry partnerships behind the development and engineering of its Titan submersible.
The submersible likely suffered a “catastrophic implosion” based on debris located 1600 feet from the wreckage of the Titanic, according to the Coast Guard. The five passengers aboard the experimental deep-sea vessel “have sadly been lost,” according to the submersible company OceanGate Inc.
The deadly implosion of the Titan submersible, a vessel which OceanGate once said would mark the “beginning of a new era of exploration,” leaves open questions about how the upstart company was able to not only operate the vessel but also convince paying customers to travel aboard it.
In some public statements, the company suggested that its Titan submersible — the company’s only vessel able to reach Titanic depths — was designed and engineered with the assistance of entities such as Boeing, the University of Washington and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In statements to ABC News, each entity described its role in Titan submersible, or lack thereof, as more limited than sometimes stated by OceanGate.
When asked about these exaggerations about the role of partnerships in the development of the Titan submersible, an OceanGate representative declined to comment on the matter.
“The state-of-the-art vessel, designed and engineered by OceanGate Inc. in collaboration [with] experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington, made its subsea debut in 2018,” OceanGate Expeditions — the Bahamas-based company that operates U.S.-based OceanGate Inc. submersibles — said about the Titan submersible on its now inaccessible website.
OceanGate’s founder and CEO Stockton Rush — who was aboard the missing vessel — made similar statements about his company’s partnerships during an interview with CBS News correspondent David Pogue in 2022, who asked about the construction of the Titan submersible, which Rush said used some minor parts purchased from consumer retailers like Camping World.
“The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered at all because that’s where we worked with Boeing and NASA, [and] University of Washington,” Rush said. “Everything else can fail. Your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You’re still going to be safe.”
Kevin Williams, the executive director of the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory, told ABC News the school and laboratory were also not involved in the “design, engineering or testing” of the Titan submersible.
Victor Balta, a UW spokesperson, added that OceanGate and UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory initially signed a $5 million collaborative research agreement, but the two entities “parted ways” after only $650,000 of work was completed. That research only resulted in the development of another OceanGate submersible, the shallow-diving Cyclops I submersible, according to Balta.
The steel-hulled Cyclops I is only rated to reach 500 meters, compared to the Titan, which is constructed from carbon fiber and titanium to reach depths of 4,000 meters, the company said.
“The University’s and Laboratory’s engineering partnership with OceanGate ended with the completion of the shallow water vessel CYCLOPS, which served as a test platform for OceanGate since 2015,” Williams said. “Because APL-UW expertise involved only shallow water implementation, the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition.”
Balta added that OceanGate contracted with the school to use testing tanks on a contractual basis for nine tests between 2016 and 2022.
“No UW researchers were involved in any of those tests and UW personnel did not provide any verification or validation of any OceanGate equipment as a result of those tests,” Balta said in a statement.
When asked about the details of those relationships with OceanGate, a Boeing representative told ABC News that the aerospace company was not involved in designing or building the deep-sea submersible.
“Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it,” a Boeing spokesperson told ABC News in a statement.
In a 2021 press release, OceanGate thanked “industry partner” Boeing for their “design and engineering support” related to the Titan submersible.
OceanGate also made repeated statements in press releases about its involvement with NASA, including thanking the entity for design and engineering support.
“NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will serve as the facility where the development and manufacturing of a new aerospace-grade hull is completed,” the company wrote in a 2020 press release. It also said NASA would be involved in the testing of the “new carbon fiber pressure vessels.”
A 2022 press release walked back the description of NASA’s involvement, saying a team of NASA engineers only consulted throughout the development and engineering of the project.
In a statement to ABC News, NASA confirmed it consulted on materials and manufacturing for the Titan submersible pursuant to an agreement with OceanGate.
“NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate,” the statement said.
The strength of OceanGate’s purported industry partnerships was used to build credibility with industry groups such as the Marine Technology Society as well as the public who would buy tickets to OceanGate’s expeditions.
“[OceanGate] has invested six years of design and testing of this pressure vessel design in partnership with technology organizations such as the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington and the Boeing Company,” the Marine Technology Society noted in its 2017-18 global industry overview of manned underwater vehicles. “OceanGate reports this has given the company full confidence in their novel approach…”
Members of a MTS committee specializing in submersibles later voiced concern that OceanGate was avoiding industry-wide safety standards, according to a 2018 letter. The letter itself, which was never approved to be sent to OceanGate, was leaked to Rush, according to the committee’s chair William Kohnen.
“Your representation is, at minimum, misleading to the public and breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold,” the letter said about OceanGate’s marketing materials about the safety of Titan’s design.
“The company had indicated that their state of innovation was beyond, beyond what was allowable within the regulatory standards we have today and that they would proceed without certification,” Kohnen told ABC News, adding that the company heeded some of the comments made in the 2018 letter.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Amanda Maile, Victor Ordonez, and Gina Sunseri contributed to this report.
