The OceanGate Titan sub’s camera was recovered mostly intact, with 12 images and nine videos retrieved from its SD memory card
Eerie photos have been released after an undamaged memory card was pulled from the wreckage of the doomed OceanGate Titan submersible.
The vessel, valued at $4.2 million, imploded in June 2023, around 372 miles south-east of St John’s, Newfoundland, in Canada, killing all five people on board: OceanGate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush, 61; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19; British businessman Hamish Harding, 58; and 77-year-old former French navy diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)’s report on the chilling images stored on the Titan sub’s camera memory card follows its final report on the disaster, which confirmed that faulty engineering caused the vessel’s implosion.
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The recovered camera, which had been mounted on the exterior of the Titan’s hull, was designed to record video and still images at depths of up to 6,000 metres.
Experts at the NTSB’s Vehicle Recorder Laboratory were able to extract 12 still images and nine video clips from the SD memory card inside the device. According to tech outlet Tom’s Hardware, the card appears to be a SanDisk Extreme Pro 512GB, which costs around £60 on Amazon.
The camera’s outer casing remained intact, but its lens – as viewed through the sapphire optical window – was shattered.
The device survived the implosion thanks to its tough titanium body, while the camera’s front optical window was made of synthetic sapphire crystal to protect the lens and electronics inside.
Three of the recovered videos appear to have been taken underwater as they show similar lighting and surroundings.
The NTSB was also able to identify the Launch and Recovery System (LARS) used to deploy and retrieve the OceanGate Titan submersible during its training or missions. One underwater video shows a diver swimming near the Titan, wearing flippers and what appears to be an oxygen tank.
The independent federal agency said: “OceanGate was able to identify the diver in the video from his diving suit and gear. This diver was only involved in Missions 1 and 2 of 2023, and was only present for shallow water training, likely near Bay Bulls Newfoundland. The accident dive was 2023 Mission #5.”
Other images and videos are said to have been captured in May 2023, a month before the disaster. They show waterside scenes at the quay in Holyrood, Canada, as well as shots taken inside the Remotely Operated Vehicle workshop at the Marine Institute’s main campus in St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
The NTSB report noted that data could be stored either on the onboard camera memory or on an attached computer, depending on the configuration.
The report concluded: “It is likely that the camera was being configured to store its data to the onboard computer on May 16th, with one image being stored accidentally to the camera’s SD Card and then configured properly to store data to the computer on board the submersible.
“No data with a timestamp after May 16th was found on the camera, so it is likely that none of the data recorded on the SD Card were of the accident voyage or dive.”