From Titanic search to fallout: Who will pay for the attempted sub rescue?

On Thursday, after a massive search operation, the US Coast Guard confirmed the worst news: the five people on board the Titan submersible had died after debris was found near the wreck of the Titanic. The vessel had suffered a “catastrophic implosion”.

On Friday, the fallout commenced.

It has emerged the US Navy had detected a sound consistent with an implosion when communications were lost with the Titan, an hour and 45 minutes into its two-hour descent to the wreckage, on Sunday.

The Navy analysed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost”, a senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press on Thursday.

According to reports, the information was shared with the US Coast Guard, which decided to continue the search operation and “make every effort to save the lives on board”.

Watch: Submersible lost on dive to Titanic suffered 'catastrophic implosion' – US Coast Guard

Meanwhile, James Cameron, director of the Titanic movie and a submersible expert who has visited the wreck 33 times, said he had predicted Titan’s fate days before the news was confirmed.

“I felt in my bones what had happened,” Cameron told the BBC.

“For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously… sub’s gone.

”[It] felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”

A number of vessels, aircraft and other pieces of specialist equipment were deployed by the US and Canada as part of the search.

Rear Admiral John Mauger said at a press conference on Thursday that “we were able to mobilise an immense amount of gear to the site in just a really remarkable amount of time”.

But all this will have cost a lot of money.

Chris Boyer, the executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, told the New York Times: “These people paid a lot of money [£200,000] to do something extraordinarily risky [visit the Titanic wreck, which is at a depth of 3,800m] and hard to recover from”.

He said the search operation would “probably cost millions”.

OceanGate is the controversial company which ran the expedition. It has emerged the company’s CEO, Stockton Rush - who was one of the five on board the Titan vessel - said two years ago that the vessel's design had "broken some rules".

He told a YouTube channel in August 2021: "I've broken some rules to make this. I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. Carbon fibre and titanium? There's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did."

But, according to Paul Zukunft, a former leader of the US Coast Guard, the company won't have to reimburse the government.

He told the Washington Post this is a basic principle of maritime safety: "It’s no different than if a private citizen goes out and his boat sinks. We go out and recover him. We don’t stick them with the bill after the fact.”

Other countries, including the UK, provided assistance.

Two Royal Air Force planes were used to transfer equipment and personnel to St John’s in Canada to assist with the hunt for the submersible. The C-17 Globemaster and A400 Atlas aircraft departed RAF Lossiemouth in north-east Scotland on Thursday.

Earlier that day, the UK also embedded a Royal Navy submariner at the request of the US Coast Guard.

Yahoo News UK has asked the Ministry of Defence if the UK taxpayer will foot the bill for these deployments.

Assessing the disaster, it was James Cameron who said: “We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings.”

But Guillermo Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, defended the firm from critics.

Read more: All Titanic wreckage trips should be cancelled, says scientist

Sohnlein defended the safety of the submersible, saying he and his co-founder Rush were committed to safety during expeditions.

He told Times Radio on Friday: “He was extremely committed to safety. He was also extremely diligent about managing risks, and was very keenly aware of the dangers of operating in a deep ocean environment.

“So that’s one of the main reasons I agreed to go into business with him in 2009.”

Sohnlein, who no longer works for the company, continued: “I know from first-hand experience that we were extremely committed to safety and safety and risk mitigation was a key part of the company culture.”

He added on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Anyone who operates in that depth of the ocean, whether it is human-rated submersibles or robotic submersibles, knows the risks of operating under such pressure and that at any given moment, on any mission, with any vessel, you run the risk of this kind of implosion.”