One year after the fatal Titan submarine disaster, researchers are preparing to return to the Titanic

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Tuesday marks the first anniversary of the deaths of five people on board a submarine that sank the Titanic. Their disappearance sparked a high-profile search and kept the world in suspense for five days.

The rescue operation was called off after authorities and experts discovered debris from the private submarine on the seabed and concluded that it had imploded just hours after the dive began.

David Concannon, a former consultant to OceanGate, the company that owns the Titan submersible, said he wanted to mark the anniversary privately with a group of people who have been involved with the company or the submarine’s expeditions over the years, including scientists, volunteers and mission specialists.

After the fatal accident, the company behind the Titan was practically at its end and the negative reactions to the disaster had escalated to the point of outright death threats, he explained.

“Stockton Rush has been vilified, as has everyone associated with OceanGate. I wasn’t even there and I’ve received death threats,” he told AP.

However, doubts have been raised as to whether the submersible was doomed to disaster due to its unconventional design and its builder’s refusal to undergo independent inspections customary in the industry.

The U.S. Coast Guard immediately launched a high-level investigation into the incident, but officials said the investigation would take longer than the 12 months originally planned and that a planned public hearing to discuss the findings would not take place for at least two months.

In addition to Rush, two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, the British adventurer Hamish Harding and the Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, were killed in the implosion.

Exploration Club: Rescue was not fast enough

Richard Garriott, president of the Explorer’s Club, of which Harding and Nargeolet were members, believes that even if the Titan had not imploded, the right rescue equipment would not have arrived quickly enough.

The tragedy took everyone from the coast guard to the ships on the ground by surprise, which underscores the importance of developing detailed search and rescue plans in advance of any expedition, he said.

His organization has now set up a task force to help others.

“That’s what we’re really trying to correct, to make sure we know exactly who to call and exactly what materials we need to source,” he said.

Garriott believes the world is entering a new golden age of discovery thanks to technological advances that have opened frontiers and provided new tools to explore places already visited more thoroughly. The Titanic tragedy has not dimmed that outlook, he said.

The desire to continually explore new depths

In the meantime, deep-sea exploration continues.

The Georgia-based company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic plans to visit the sunken ocean liner in July using remote-operated vehicles, and an Ohio real estate billionaire has announced he plans to travel to the shipwreck in 2026 in a two-person submersible.

“It was the desire of the scientific community to go into the oceans,” said Greg Stone, an experienced marine scientist and friend of Titan operator Stockton Rush.

Experienced deep-sea researcher Katy Croff Bell agrees.

The Titan implosion highlighted the importance of adhering to industry standards and conducting rigorous testing, but in the industry as a whole, “the safety record in this area has been very good for decades,” says Bell, president of the Ocean Discovery League, a nonprofit organization that works to make deep-sea research more affordable and accessible.