Marine salvage expert discouraged as he maps out possibilities for missing Titanic sub

Mester is a Puyallup resident and manages Northwest Maritime Consultants, a marine salvage and surveying company.

He says the outcome for Titan only has a few possibilities.

“The pilot could’ve had a physical health issue, heart attack, or stroke,” Mester said.

Or he says it could’ve been an electrical or communication problem, since the submersible lost contact 1 hour and 45 minutes into its voyage.

Mester says in either case, the others on board should be able to hit a weight release and resurface the sub. CBS science correspondent David Rogue went onboard Titan last year and reports the sub has seven different ways to rise to the surface, including multiple redundant ballast and air bladder systems.

But so far, it appears none of those were used. The U.S. Coast Guard, Canadian first responders, and private companies have searched more than 10,000 square miles of water and have not located Titan on the surface.

”The only other option is a catastrophic failure of the submarine. Which means the hull somehow breached,” Mester said. “If that were to happen, it would be instantaneous – no chance for any survival by anybody.”

Mester says even with sending equipment to the bottom of the ocean, finding the small sub will still be difficult.

“To go into this debris field for the Titanic, with its massive amount of debris, and find a target where the mass is so much smaller than the rest of the items on the bottom is going to be a real puzzle,” he said.

Last year CEO Stockton Rush emphasized Titan’s safety to CBS Sunday Morning.

“Everything else can fail. Your thrusters can go. Your lights can go. You’re still going to be safe,” Rush said.

“It’s kind of ironic. They’re going down to a vessel that was touted to be unsinkable on a maiden voyage. You never forget that this is a very hostile environment, it’s dangerous, it’s a new frontier,” Mester said.

The air on board the sub is expected to last until Thursday morning. But Mester says time may have already run out.

“How hopeful are you that the people on board will be found alive?” KIRO 7′s Deedee Sun asked. “I have no hope at this point and time,” Mester said after a long pause. “It’s a tragic loss.”

The structure of Titan has also come under scrutiny, with a clip from last year’s CBS Sunday Morning feature about the vessel now going viral. It’s received almost 20 million views as of Tuesday evening. At the time, Rogue questioned the safety of the vessel, and read aloud the disclaimer he had to sign for the voyage.

Y’all please watch this. It’s a CBS story that aired a while back about that submarine that is now missing. The creators of that missing submarine are DEEPLY unserious. pic.twitter.com/B6JriITyZj

— Marie, MSN, APRN, FNP-C (@FnpMarieOH) June 19, 2023

“An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death,” Rogue read aloud.

The piece also showed a game controller that was being used to navigate the vessel.

“I couldn’t help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised,” Rogue said in his report.

“We run this whole thing with this game controller,” Rush said.

But Rush stressed that critical safety elements were “buttoned down” – like the pressure vessel, which he said OceanGate worked on with Boeing, NASA, and the University of Washington.

The USCG says it will have its next briefing Wednesday morning unless there are major developments beforehand.