Missing Titanic Sub Believed to Have Imploded, All Passengers Presumed Dead

All five passengers onboard the OceanGate Titan submersible that went missing on Sunday are believed to be dead, according to OceanGate and the United States Coast Guard. 

Key Quotes: A statement from OceanGate read, “We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.” Thursday afternoon, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard said “five major pieces of debris” most likely from the Titan were located Thursday morning that indicated the submersible suffered a “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” and imploded. Mauger was not sure if the bodies would be recovered, stating, “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor.”

For Context: The small submersible set out Sunday to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. It lost contact with the surface shortly after. It was equipped with 96 hours of oxygen. Thursday morning, the Coast Guard located the debris field 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. The timeline on when the pressure loss occurred is unclear, but Mauger told reporters that Coast Guard detection equipment never detected a rapid pressure loss, which would have “generated significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up.”

How The Media Covered It: The missing submersible has been the top story in most major outlets over the past week, covered consistently and heavily across the spectrum.