The Daily - Lost 2 Miles Below the Ocean

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

A few days ago, when passengers set off on a deep sea expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, they were aboard a vessel that many experts had already concluded was dangerously designed.William Broad, a science correspondent for The Times, explains why he was worried from the start.Guest: William J. Broad, a science correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: What to know about the Titan, the vessel that went missing on Sunday on its way to the Titanic shipwreck site with five people aboard.Three decades ago, a dive in the three-person submersible Alvin revealed not only an alien world but why people engage in such risky pursuits.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. A few days ago, when passengers set off on a deep-sea expedition in the Atlantic Ocean, they were on board a vessel that many experts had already concluded was dangerously designed. One of those experts who was worried from the start is my colleague, Bill Broad. It's Thursday, June 22nd. Bill, when this submersible vessel went missing a couple of days ago, we all thought of you. Because very few people know the world of deep sea exploration as well as you do.

So, just to start, can you explain how and why you do know this world as well as you do. So just to start, can you explain how and why you do know this world as well as you do? Sure. I'm a deep sea lover. It's a beautiful world. It started about 30 years ago when I went down on a submersible dive on Alvin, which is a famous little three-person submersible run by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. And it blew my mind. I learned so much. And it was so interesting that I just kept going. I went on other dives. I became a scuba diver. It's just this amazing world, and I adore it. Can you just tell us what it's like to go that deep underwater on one of these vessels? I mean, just describe it. And what about it is so, it sounds like, addictive for you.

Yes. We went down, down, down, a mile and a half, and the daylight faded, and it was incredibly incredibly dark and you're in this cramped little sphere with two other people peering through this little porthole, which was, you know, about seven inches thick because it's withstanding the incredible growing pressure as you go down deeper and deeper and you are taken into another world. It is surprising in so many different ways. It blew my mind. There were all these gelatinous creatures that would light up as the bow wave of the submersible, you know, went out, and you'd see ripples of light going

down their body. It was like falling through a field of stars. Our backyard is filled with aliens, amazing creatures, you know. Some of them like gelatinous things that are 60 feet long and you touch them and they start to light up. I mean, it's so alien. These are the aliens in our own backyard. And I had never met them before. This was like my big introductory splash. And golly, it made a very large impression. And that was even before we got to the bottom and had all sorts of other adventures. This sounds exhilarating and otherworldly. Is it also a little bit terrifying?

It was, and it is. These people who do these things professionally are extremely aware of risk. If you're smart about it, it's fine. But it's the nature of exploration, right? It's a frontier. Right. It's just inherently perilous. Yeah, by nature, right? It's both frontier. Right. It's just inherently perilous. Yeah, by nature, right? It's both exciting and dangerous. Bill, how popular has this kind of deep sea exploration become? It's become hugely popular. Aloha. Welcome to Atlantis Submarines. A lot of it is driven by rich people who are curious about the deep sea.

Substation Curacao offers one of the most unique underwater experiences around, taking visitors down to deeper depths than you've ever imagined in a submersible. And exploring all kinds of things. Titanic was amazing. You can't believe that you're there. Including relics like the Titanic. It's no longer just something in your imagination

or something you tried to picture. It's the real ship. There are dives happening all around the globe. And this tourism is driving a huge amount of creativity in the industry, a lot of new technology, which is opening a door for all of us, for scientists. For instance, I wrote a piece for our Science Time section about bubble subs. These are amazing spinoffs where the crew capsule is,

rather than a teeny-weeny little porthole that you're squinting through, the whole submarine hull is transparent. Wow. So you can see the ocean all around you. So now scientists go down and they're discovering things like, oh, these creatures are communicating with each other with light over hundreds of feet or meters, right? Things that they had no idea before because they just couldn't even see them. just couldn't even see them. It sounds like you're saying this industry that is growing so fast, catering to rich people who want to go to the bottom of the ocean, is having this interesting and powerful

side effect of letting scientists do better exploration of that seabed. Absolutely. This is new technology in the hands of all of us, including scientists. And that's driving a lot of discovery. including scientists. And that's driving a lot of discovery. And where does OceanGate, this company behind the vessel that we are all now paying so much attention to, how does that company fit into this story you've been telling about this explosive growth in deep sea exploration? Right. Well, I am a known character in the oceanographic community because I went down on Alvin, I wrote a book, The Universe Below, about all this stuff. I wrote lots of articles for the Times about different undersea discoveries and explorations. And Ocean Gate, when it started coming into existence, reached out to me.

That was 2019. They were just doing their big testing of their big new submersible, and they wanted the world to know about it. And what did you make of their outreach to you, these pitches, and what was your response? I was immediately skeptical. Why? Well, because what they were proposing was extremely novel. They were making a very, very, very deep-diving submersible out of materials that were not industry standards. When I went down on Alvin, it was a solid titanium sphere. This one was different.

It was two separate materials, titanium and carbon fiber. This material that you use in aerospace applications and jet planes, but it wasn't a standard material for the deep sea. And they said, well, that will reduce the weight, which will reduce the costs, implying that those cost savings were going to be passed on to consumers and people that wanted to go diving in this submersible. And the danger is that the pressures as you go down in a submersible and as this submersible goes down just skyrocket. It's very, very hard to conceive how heavy ocean water is, but you get down there at the level of the Titanic and it's three tons of pressure per square inch. And this is a very, very large submersible, 22 feet long.

So just think of all that pressure. It's like an Empire State Building worth of lead pressing down on you, trying to crush you, right? And that's the big danger. Because they're not going with the industry standard, they're doing something that engineers hate. Their dictum is, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. They're so conservative because every time you change something, you introduce new factors that you may understand or you may not. New variables in the equation.

And this vehicle had a lot of new variables. Well, just explain that. What other variables were there that raised red flags for you? Well, they were cheap, cheap, cheap. When I went down in Alvin, it felt like a little bit like you were in a spaceship. You know, there's so many, you know, controlling dials and, you know, banks of switches and backup systems and all this stuff. But the controller for the thrusters on Ocean Gate Submersible was, believe it or not, a modified video game controller. Really? Yep. Hard to believe, but it's the kind of thing you'd use on an Xbox.

And there's other signs of them doing it on the cheap. They don't seem to have the redundancies that you need and want in a submersible. Communication backups, lighting backups, battery backups, every kind of backup. That seems to have not been part of their game plan. And that can become dangerous. It raises the risk. And the thing that really gets me is they didn't get this submersible certified by the standard industry groups that do this, like Lloyd's, big companies that have been doing this for hundreds of years. the certification process because the risks are so high because the pressures and even just the corrosiveness of seawater. You know, most submersibles are certified by one of these companies, but not Ocean Gates. They just decided that they didn't need it? They explain their rationale on their website. They say that they are so innovative

that these groups just can't keep up. But I think many people in the industry would say that the innovation is precisely the reason that they should get certified. Verify that they are doing something safe and secure and trustworthy. In reality, it's probably just another cost-cutting move, another way to cut corners.

Certification is a lengthy process and a costly one. So it adds to the long list of ways that the company was skirting convention as it was coming up and creating this deep diving machine. So Bill, in almost every way, OceanGate from the get-go is kind of doing things on the cheap, which is raising red flags for you. I'm curious if other experts share your concerns as this company is emerging. Absolutely. emails from OceanGate, top leading figures in the industry are writing the company to say that they fear for safety with this innovative vessel. They exactly address this point of the need for certification. And these are not junior players.

These are leading people in the industry taking on this new company. Right, because they basically fear for the safety of anyone on this kind of vessel. Yes, they do fear for the safety, but they fear for themselves, too, because they're all in it together. So they are bringing this front and center as something that could hurt the industry, not just a company. industry, not just a company. But despite all of this, Bill, people, it seems, want to go on OceanGate vessels and expeditions. Right. And it's because they don't know what we know now and what I, as a deep sea reporter and a science techie, discovered when looking at this company.

They see just the glitz and the glory and the glamour of going down to the Titanic. The company's done this over and over. This is their third season of taking dives down to the Titanic. Why not pay a bundle of money for this once-in-a-lifetime privilege of seeing this glorious wreck that has been the center of so much fascination for so long with your own eyes. I mean, it's this adventure tourism. Go to the top of Everest, go to the deep down in the ocean

and lay your eyes on this icon of human civilization that's down there rotting away. Right. And you said this is Ocean Gate's third season, so it sounds like this has all gone relatively smoothly? Yeah, right. There have been hiccups. They had a communication problem earlier, but nothing alarming. The hiccups really haven't mattered until now. We'll be right back. So Bill, tell us about this latest Ocean Gate expedition. What do we know about it from its outset?

Right. We know that this Titan vessel that OceanGate runs can take five people down. And there were five in this case. The paid four seats were very expensive, a quarter million dollars apiece. Wow. We have big money. The five people on board were the founder of the company, a British businessman, an explorer,

a British father and teenage son from a prominent Pakistani family, and a French maritime expert who knows the Titanic cold. And I should say that this last person is somebody I know. Well, tell us about him. What is his name and how did you meet him? His name is P.H. Narjolais. I met him because the expedition that we were doing over the Titanic was a joint U.S.-French expedition. P.H. would tell us wonderful tales, you know, of his life and adventures.

He's extremely knowledgeable. I believe he's been down to Titanic more than any other person. He is the Titanic expert for a company that has done a lot of the Titanic salvage, you know, bringing pieces of the ship back up to display in museums. So, P.H. was the guide, it sounds like. He was the guide. And because this submersible was done on the cheap, unbelievably, it doesn't have its own navigation system. So they can get messages from the mothership to tell them where they are in relation to the wreck, but they can't figure that out

themselves. And when you do the wreck, which is really complicated, because all this rusted superstructure and collapsed steel and iron is literally decomposing before your eyes. Things could drop on you. You touch something and it triggers something else. And all of a sudden you're pinned to the bottom by a piece of steel that falls on you. There's potential for a lot of scary stuff. And if there's one person who could help you in this situation to try to avoid those pitfalls, it's P.H. Nargile. So with P.H. as the guide on this expedition, where exactly does this trip begin? So it starts last Sunday at the mothership. starts last Sunday at the mothership. The submersible opens up and these five people crawl in and the port door gets shut and sealed with 18 bolts. You know, this is the most

vulnerable spot on the vehicle. If you could weld it shut, that would be great. on the vehicle. If you could weld it shut, that would be great. And then they have a launch platform that the submersible moves off of into the water, and then down, down, down they go, very slowly. This is not an expressway, because you're monitoring the health of the submersible very carefully, the stresses and the strains as these pressures, huge pressures build up and up. It's about one mile per hour. The Titanic is down two and a half miles. So that means it's going to take about two and a half hours to get down there. It's a long, long voyage. You kick back and here we go. long, long voyage. You kick back and here we go. And then something goes wrong.

An hour and 45 minutes down, the mothership up above loses contact with the submersible. It's not completely unusual for the communication channel to go out. So, it's happened before. Let's hope for the best. So, when do things become more serious? And when does the idea that this might just be a routine loss of communication become something else? Well, on the mothership, they're all waiting, hopefully, for this thing to come back. But late in the day on Sunday, still no submersible. It's missed its deadline.

The thing has disappeared many, many, many hours earlier. So at this point, when their plan is basically falling apart, the alarms start to ring. Call in the feds. Let's get the Coast Guard. Let's alert people to the fact that we have a lost submersible. And it's around this time, Bill,

as I recall, that the whole world learns that something has gone wrong here. But we don't know what it is. And I'm curious what people like you and experts in ocean exploration think might have gone wrong at that point. Right. So the first thing is the possibility that this imploded. It's like an explosion in reverse. Everything collapses together really quick. But then you say, well, maybe, you know,

they made it down there and they're stuck under some of the wreckage. They've got a lot of oxygen and they've got days to try to work this out. So let's get every piece of equipment down there and hope for the best, right? Let's make a huge unprecedented effort to rescue people if they can be rescued.

And if that's the case, if people on board can still be rescued, a clock is ticking for them, right? Absolutely. And the main clock is the amount of oxygen that they have. After we learned of the troubles they were having, the company said that there were 96 hours of oxygen on board the submersible. So that's, you know, several days.

There's still the possibility of rescuing these people. Well, knowing that, what does the Coast Guard actually do? The Coast Guard has played this heroic role by getting technology from all around the world, from the best suppliers, from industry, undersea robots, sonar gear, all kinds of rescue equipment to do this amazing survey over an area of the North Atlantic the size of Connecticut. It's a huge search area because there are these currents that can carry this thing way, way far away. So it's now being combed by, it seems like, you know, we're moving toward a dozen vessels.

Bill, in your mind, what are the best scenarios for trying to actually rescue this vessel? If we assume, as I think we have to as optimistic human beings, that there are passengers still alive. Just outline this scenario. Well, for me, the best would be that they got stuck in the Titanic wreckage. It's not serious stuck, but it's enough to keep them there. And an undersea robot is lowered from a surface ship and gets down there on a long tether, down to the Titanic, down to the sub. And lo and behold, you know, these people on the surface who are looking through the robot's eyes, they say, oh, look, all we have to do is... Just knock this thing loose. Knock this thing loose, you know, move that piece of Titanic scrap

so that they can get up, right? There are happy endings here. And we have probably some of the world's best, smartest people and best technologies working this problem right now. So I think it's premature to rule out anything at this point.

We just hope for the best. And just to explain when we're talking, it's about 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday. What exactly do we know at this particular moment? Have there been any developments we should just talk through? Well, a very, very nice piece of positive evidence is that these planes dropping what they call sonobuoys, basically microphones that drop down into the ocean, have heard sounds coming from the area of Titanic that sound like banging, sounds like the kind of things that a person trapped in a submersible would do to try to let people know that they're trapped. And that's a hopeful sign.

So they're focusing in on that to try to see if that, in fact, is the submersible and not some random piece of Titanic that is falling and that we're hearing. And if so, get on with the rescue. I'm curious, but how worried are you at this point, this many days and hours into this, about the people on this vessel, including, of course, PH, this person you know pretty well? I'm pretty worried. I mean, I think it's a slim chance at this point.

It's getting slimmer with each passing hour. But think of Apollo 13. What were the chances that it was going to make it back to Earth? Very slim. Very slim. Did they make it back to Earth? Thank God. So who knows what's going to happen, right?

The story ain't over until it's over. Right. It feels like no matter what happens to this vessel, Titan, and those on board, that this is going to have a real impact on this world of deep sea exploration that you know and love so well and that has been growing so fast and has all kinds of real upside for scientists and environmentalists. What do you think that impact is going to be? I think it's going to have a chilling effect. I think it's going to make people think twice. That's going to be the near-term effect. To the extent that that becomes a long-term effect, it'll be tragic.

Tragic why? Because the more people that get down, the better scientists that get down, the more we can learn about the ocean, this fantastic riddle that composes 70% of the surface of the earth, the better we can take care of the planet, take care of the ocean, right? It's the planetary lifeblood. And so I worry about a chilling effect stopping that. But I think constructively, the bright silver lining of what is a tragedy, and let's hope they're rescued but it's still you know a disaster is that there's regulatory possibilities there are ways to you know try to create incentives for certification of vessels you want to up the game now that we know that it could

turn so bad so quickly and you know it know, it's the human spirit, right? I mean, we don't crumple. We get up and try harder. Did people give up on ocean liners after Titanic? No. They kept getting better and better and better, right? And safer and safer and safer. And guess what?

That is ultimately going to be the endgame. Submersibles will get better. This industry, if it takes a hit, will bounce back. And more people than ever will be learning about this wonderful, mysterious world in our backyard. Well, Bill, thank you very much. We appreciate it. No, no, thank you very much. We appreciate it. No, no, Michael. Thank you.

The Times reports that as of Wednesday night, rescue workers involved in the search for the Titan were operating under the assumption that the vessel would run out of oxygen sometime this morning. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, yet another example emerged of a Supreme Court justice failing to disclose a lavish gift from a powerful conservative leader. ProPublica reported that as part of a luxury fishing trip, Justice Samuel Alito was flown to Alaska on the private plane of Paul

Singer, a wealthy hedge fund manager and Republican donor. A flight that would have cost more than $100,000 each way had Alito chartered the plane himself. Later, Alito participated in several Supreme Court rulings involving businesses controlled by Singer rather than recuse himself. When asked for comment from ProPublica, Alito instead published a letter in the conservative-leaning opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal in which he defended his conduct as ethical. His undisclosed gift is similar to those given to Justice Clarence Thomas, who allowed another wealthy Republican donor, Harlan Crowe, to pay for multiple luxury vacations. Today's episode was produced by Sidney Harper and Luke Vanderplug. It was edited by Liz O'Balin and Lisa Chow,

contains original music by Dan Powell and Mary Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landferk of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.