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The U.S. Navy may have detected the sound of the Titan submersible imploding on Sunday but faced a "complex" task and "uncertainty" as a frantic search for the vessel continued this week, according to a former Navy officer.
The U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday said that the Titan suffered a "catastrophic implosion" after debris from the vessel was discovered near the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. OceanGate, the company that built the submersible and operated tours of the Titanic site, told Newsweek that all five occupants had "sadly been lost."
A report from The Wall Street Journal quoted an unnamed senior Navy official who said that "acoustic data" detected "an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion" that happened "in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost," about one hour and 45 minutes into the vessel's dive on Sunday.
Jeff Eggers, retired Navy SEAL commander and ex-official for the administration of former President Barack Obama, discussed the report during an appearance on CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront a short time later.
Eggers said that Navy "hydrophones," which are used to detect sounds underwater, "certainly" would have detected the sound of the imploding submersible but were operating in a "very complex" acoustic environment that might have left some room for doubt.
"The implosion of a pressure hull such as the Titan is going to be a violent, almost explosive phenomenon," said Eggers. "So it will certainly register for those very sensitive hydrophones. And at the same time, it's a very dynamic environment ... the acoustics of the undersea environment are very dynamic, very complex."
"I imagine even with the best acoustic technicians that the Navy has, there was still some uncertainty as to what they were hearing," he added.
A senior Navy official told Newsweek that the sound of the implosion was "not definitive" but the information about its detection was "immediately" shared with an incident commander to "assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission."
"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," the official said.
The Navy analyzed its acoustic data and found what was likely the sound of the implosion at some point after the Titan was reported missing on Sunday evening, according to the Associated Press.
Experts in marine technology, at least one former employee of OceanGate and several others who dealt with the company all expressed concerns about the safety of the submersible years before the disaster unfolded.
A 2019 blog post from OceanGate touted Titan's in-house "real-time hull health monitoring" system as being able to determine "if the hull is compromised well before situations become life-threatening."
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who once claimed that the vessel was "invulnerable," was among those killed in the implosion on Sunday. British billionaire Hamish Harding, French maritime expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood were also killed.
Update 06/23/2023, 11:44 p.m. EST: This article has been updated to include comments from a senior Navy official.
About the writer
Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter based in New York. Her focus is on reporting national politics, where she ... Read more