Titan sub hearing latest: OceanGate scientific director says sub malfunctioned days before fatal voyage

The hearing will return at 8.30am ET this morning before first testimony is given from OceanGate mission specialist Fred Hagen at 9am.

The Coast Guard’s panel will then hear from Dave Dyer, an engineer from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Lab, at approximately 10.45am.

Co-founder and CEO of Triton Submarines Patrick Lahey will testify at 1.30pm with a final break down of the day’s events taking place at 5.15pm.

The hearing break over the weekend and will then return on Monday at 8.30am.

Catterson recalled drop weight issues on the two test dives he was a part of years before the ill-fated Titan set sail.

He described how drop weights work. “The sub became neutral so the sub became neutral...They were only able to drop 70 pounds. That’s not enough to do what they needed to have happen,” Catterson told the panel.

When asked whether OceanGate staffing in Expedition 2023 was “sufficient to ensure safety,” Catterson paused before responding: “I think training and operations at sea could have been better.”

They did their training out of Everett which is “like a bathtub compared to the North Atlantic,” he said. They didn’t have practice in rougher conditions, like fog. “The training probably didn’t reflect as good as a base of knowledge for out there,” referring to where the Titan set sail.

“All good here” were some of the final words that the doomed Titan submersible crew communicated before the submersible imploded on its mission to the Titanic wreckage site in June 2023.

The message, revealed as part of the Coast Guard’s Monday hearing into the circumstances of the failed mission, was sent to support vessel Polar Prince on June 18, 2023, shortly before the submersible imploded, killing all five of its crew members. It was an incident that captivated both sides of the Atlantic as crews made a mad dash to save the crew after the sub lost contact with the surface - with the world unaware that the lives had been lost.

The Coast Guard played an animated re-enactment of the Titan’s voyage that captured the submersible’s final, spotty exchange with the Polar Prince, during the Monday hearing that shed new light on the sub’s final mission.

Around 10am on June 18, Polar Prince asked the Titan crew whether they were able to see the support vessel on the submersible’s display. The support vessel asked the crew the same question seven times over the course of seven minutes. The Titan crew then sent “k,” meaning it was asking for a communications check.

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He said that he and Stockton Rush “pretty much stopped talking to me rationally” after the Andrea Doria incident.

At the end of the summer 2016, Rush and others told him OceanGate was “no longer willing to pay” for his wife and daughter’s permanent residence. Lochridge believed it was because he “embarrassed him in front of clients,” referring to the Andrea Doria crash, which was a “turning point” in his and Rush’s relationship.

The following day, Rush presented him with a new contract that he sign a new contract that stipulated he would have to reimburse the company if he left within the next 12 months. Rush instructed him not to tell his immigration attorney about the new arrangement.

“I had my doubts,” Catterson said about the carbon fiber hull.

“I think that when you put it under compression, they can buckle, they can shift, they can move all these directions three-directionally,” he added.

When aksed if he had voiced his concerns about the hull to any OceanGate employees, Catterson said he told Stockton Rush, Tony Nissen, the first witness today who is an engineer, and David Lochridge, who was terminated shortly after detailing his concerns with the Titan’s design in an inspection report.