The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a chilling recording of what it suspects is the moment the Titan submersible imploded in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
The audio, captured by a moored passive acoustic recorder roughly 900 miles from the disaster site, starts out with a soft static and then a muffled boom. It is followed by silence. According to the Coast Guard, the clip features the “suspected acoustic signature” of the submersible implosion on June 18, 2022.
The Titan submersible, a 22-foot carbon-fiber and titanium craft, vanished shortly after it set off on a deep-sea expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic with five people onboard, including British billionaire Hamish Harding, as well as prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
Also onboard were Stockton Rush — the CEO of the sub’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions — and French diver and Titanic expert Paul Henry Nargeolet. They were all killed in the implosion.
According to the Coast Guard, the sub lost contact with its support vessel an hour and 45 minutes into the dive at 12,000 feet below the surface, sparking a massive search effort that involved multiple agencies from around the world, all of them racing to find the vessel before the oxygen supply ran out.
Four days after the craft disappeared, a remote-operated vehicle discovered the sub’s tail cone days later, some 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. Several other pieces have since been located.
A subsequent investigation into the blast revealed the sub had several structural flaws and that its hull had not been independently reviewed before it dipped beneath waters off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.