New Photo Shows Wrecked Titanic Sub on Ocean Floor

This is so dark.

Watery Grave

During a public Coast Guard hearing on Monday, grim new details of the Titan submersible disaster came to light.

It's been 15 months since the tiny vessel descended to visit the Titanic shipwreck 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic. But somewhere along its journey, the Titan submersible abruptly imploded, killing all five people on board.

Well over a year later, the US Coast Guard revealed the first image of the wreck in the form of a screenshot of a video recorded by a remotely operated deep-sea drone.

The vehicle spotted the Titan's tail cone and other related debris on June 22, four days after it disappeared and a day before the US Coast Guard officially declared the submersible had been lost.

The image is an eerie reminder of the danger the crew was in, at least in part as the result of former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush repeatedly ignoring safety concerns and using legal threats to silence his critics over the years.

Rush was one of the passengers, ironically, who perished when the submersible imploded.

Limited Shell Life

The hearing was the first time we've heard from officials about what exactly went wrong since the disaster, as the New York Times reports. The US Coast Guard discovered a shocking number of problems, including 70 equipment-related issues in 2021 and 48 additional ones in 2022.

Less than a month before it imploded, the Titan was found "partially sunk" days after being set off as part of a test. Days before its fatal accident, passengers on a separate mission were slammed against its wall as it resurfaced.

Experts have since pointed out several design flaws, some of which may have been implemented by OceanGate as cost-cutting measures, including its unusual pill-like shape, foregoing the industry standard sphere shape.

Rush also once bragged about using expired carbon fiber, which was bought from troubled aerospace contractor Boeing. Experts have since lambasted the material as a poor choice for a deep sea vessel, because carbon fiber weakens over time.

We still don't exactly know what caused the submersible's hull to implode. But Monday's hearing was only the start of two weeks of public proceedings, suggesting we're likely to find out — and potentially see — a lot more grisly details.

More on the saga: Oh No! Yet Another Billionaire Plans to Visit the Titanic Wreck