EAST AURORA, N.Y. — This week the Coast Guard opened a hearing to focus on what happened in the June 2023 implosion of the Titan submersible which killed five people in the North Atlantic as they were diving towards the wreckage of the Titanic.
2 On Your Side went to East Aurora Wednesday to speak with the CEO of Pelagic Research Services which helped lead the Coast Guard's massive rescue and recovery effort last summer.
You may remember last summer as the world was intently focused on the search and rescue operation in the North Atlantic Ocean off St. John's, Newfoundland to try to find the Titan submersible and its five-person crew.
And we here in Western New York were fascinated to learn that an element of underwater equipment, the remotely piloted Odysseus, was stored in an East Aurora back street office-garage complex. But we also learned about its unique abilities and the team members of the firm Pelagic Research Services were thrust into the global media spotlight as they were asked to lead the rescue effort. Instead, they sadly found debris from the Titan 12,500 feet below the surface near the Titanic's resting place as it imploded with the deaths of the five people.
Pelagic CEO Edward Cassano told us they almost immediately began search operations after arriving in St. John's and having their equipment loaded aboard one of the search vessels. Their journey had actually begun the day before when the call came in and the Odysseus and other equipment was packed and transported within only a few hour's notice to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport to three U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo jets for the flight to Canada.
"The first dive was when the debris was located and the other six were about mapping the debris field and then recovery," Cassano said.
They actually used a specially equipped control room for the operators on board the Horizon Artic mother ship platform to also recover the wreckage of the imploded submersible which is equipped with manipulator arms and grasping claws.
Now the two-week Coast Guard hearing, which is looking into the cause of the Titan's implosion, has for the first time released video of the Titan's vehicle tail cone on the ocean floor. It was recorded by the Pelagic crew last June.
We asked Cassano about the hearing.
"I think everyone would like to understand what happened and hopefully through those answers provide advice and guidance to anyone else who is going to be pushing those limits."
Even though his vehicle is remotely piloted through the ocean depths Cassano added.
"We will always have a need to understand and explore the ocean and one of the critical ways of doing that I believe is in human-occupied vehicles."
Cassano spoke of the value of knowledge gained from up close human observations of the ocean environment.
On a somber note, Cassano pointed out "The area of the loss of the Titanic which now includes the loss of the Oceangate Titan submersible - it's a - the only way I can describe it - you may have heard me say before - it's feels spiritual. There's something about that spot. And I made sure that my team and working with the captain - the ship's crew acknowledged where we were. We acknowledged the effort we were making for trying to rescue the team on the Titan submersible. We acknowledged their loss and always acknowledged the loss of Titanic as well."
Pelagic Research Services handles these catastrophic events and recently checked out the wreckage of the Deepwater Horizon ocean drilling rig which exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. They have added another underwater vehicle like Odysseus and are working on a third one for expanded undersea exploration, environmental work, and other missions for NOAA - (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and other agencies and labs around the world.