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Eight hours. And within them, many unanswered questions.
The time lag has yet to be explained by the company that owns the submersible, OceanGate Expeditions. But it may not have mattered – The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday the vessel imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said it was too soon to say whether the implosion happened at the time of last communication. But it was not detected by sonar buoys used by search crews, he said, which suggests it happened before they arrived.
“We had listening devices in the water throughout and did not hear any signs of catastrophic failure from those,” he said.
Sean Leet, head of the company that co-owns the Titan’s support ship, refused to discuss the timeline during a news conference Wednesday, saying only that “all protocols were followed for the mission.” But experts familiar with deep-sea exploration said those lost hours raise red flags.
“The time delay between declaring a submersible sunk and notification to outside resources and emergency responders appears to be excessive,” said Robert Kraft, a deep-sea explorer who has located missing ships in the ocean. The emergency procedure in question, he said, is typically declared after three consecutive scheduled communications are missed “but can vary slightly between organizations.”
Others suggested the delay could have been due to the unorthodox approach taken by the company behind the experimental vessel.
Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy, said the people on the Polar Prince likely didn’t call for help after losing communication with the Titan because the submersible had previously experienced communication failures – so such an occurrence didn’t raise immediate alarms.
