Recovery teams managed to locate a camera in and among the wreckage of the ill-fated OceanGate Titan submersible.
Five people were tragically killed during OceanGate's planned expedition to the wreck of the Titanic on 18 June 2023.
The vessel - valued at $4.2 million (£3.1 million) - lost contact just an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour descent and just days later the wreckage was found on the North Atlantic ocean floor.
There were no survivors as OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman all died.
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OceanGate - the private deep-sea exploration company - ceased operations after the catastrophic implosion, while multiple agencies, such as the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), have conducted investigations into the disaster.
The NTSB recently announced that they found a titanium-bodied underwater camera, fitted with a sapphire crystal optical window, in the wreckage.
It was still partly intact from the debris field of the sub that imploded.
The discovery of the camera, designed to withstand depths of up to 6,000 metres, offered an eerie insight from recovered pictures and footage.
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After being retrieved from the ocean floor, the device was sent to the NTSB’s Vehicle Recorder Laboratory for detailed examination.
Investigators noted that the titanium casing had remained intact despite the immense pressures, though the lens behind the sapphire window had shattered.
Remarkably, the internal SD memory card was still recoverable, allowing analysts to extract 12 still images and nine short videos.
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Initial findings revealed that none of the footage captured the Titan’s final dive or the moments leading to its implosion.
The latest timestamped files dated back to 16 May 2023, suggesting the material was recorded a month before the fatal mission.
"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 NTSB said.
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"The accident dive was 2023 Mission #5."
Some of the images displayed waterside views at Holyrood, Canada, and interior shots from the Marine Institute’s Remotely Operated Vehicle workshop in St John’s. These were likely taken during equipment setup and calibration phases.
The NTSB added: "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."
Topics: Titan Submersible, Titanic, Ocean
Anish Vij