'All good here': Last messages revealed from Titan submersible before implosion: Coast Guard

One of the last messages sent from the doomed Titan submersible during its June 2023 voyage to the Titanic wreckage was "all good here," according to a presentation from a U.S. Coast Guard hearing on the deadly implosion.

The Marine Board of Investigation for the U.S. Coast Guard's two-week hearing into the incident began on Monday, 15 months after the OceanGate vessel catastrophically imploded during its deep-sea voyage, killing all five people aboard.

An animation created by the Coast Guard played during the hearing on Monday showed the text communications between the Titan and the surface vessel, Polar Prince, as the submersible descended toward the ocean floor on June 18, 2023. The short text messages were the only means of communication between the Titan crew and the personnel on the Polar Prince as the vessel attempted to reach the Titanic, which sits 3,800 meters below sea level.

At approximately 2,274 meters, the Titan sent the message, "All good here," according to the animation.

The last communication from the submersible was sent at approximately 3,341 meters: "Dropped two wts," meaning drop weights, according to the Coast Guard.

All communications and tracking from the submersible to Polar Prince were lost at 3,346 meters, according to the Coast Guard.

Debris from the Titan was found on the ocean floor four days later. All five crew members -- including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush -- were determined to have died in a catastrophic implosion.

The Coast Guard released a new image during the hearing Monday that shows Titan debris, including the tail cone, at the bottom of the ocean.

The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, according to Jason Neubauer, chair of the Marine Board of Investigation.

"The Marine Board's investigation will determine as closely as possible the factors that contributed to the incident, so that proper recommendations for the prevention of similar casualties may be made," Neubauer said at the start of Monday's hearing.

The investigation will also examine whether there is any evidence of misconduct or criminal acts in connection with the incident, he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating the implosion and will make its own determination as to the probable cause, according to Marcel Muise, an investigator with the agency's Office of Marine Safety.

Attorneys with the firm Debevoise & Plimpton, which represent OceanGate, are also attending the hearing.

"There are no words to ease the loss endured by the families impacted by this tragic incident, but we hope that this hearing will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy and prevent anything like this from happening again," Jane Shvets with Debevoise & Plimpton said during opening remarks.

In addition to Rush, those killed in the implosion included French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.

According to a Coast Guard presentation during Monday's hearing, the Titan was tested to 1.09 times its operating pressure -- the industry standard is 1.25 times.

The vessel had 70 equipment issues in 2021 that needed correcting, and 48 more in 2022, according to the Coast Guard.

The Titan partially sank four weeks before the incident following a night of high seas and fog, according to the Coast Guard. Days before the implosion, passengers slammed against the vessel during resurfacing, the Coast Guard said.

Some two dozen witnesses are scheduled to testify during the two-week hearing.

The hearing's first witness was Tony Nissen, OceanGate's former engineering director. He testified that he wouldn't sign off on a dive to the Titanic in July 2019 due to a crack in the hull, and said he was fired that year.

Nissen also said he believes the Titan was struck by lightning in April 2018.

"That is a difficult thing to prove, except I had to drag a lot of my engineering team down there to replace all the electronics in it. And I could find all the lightning traces. So it took high energy for sure," he said.

Nissen testified he was kept in the dark and didn't know OceanGate's goal when he was initially hired was to go to the Titanic.

Asked whether he felt comfortable going down to the Titanic in the submersible, Nissen responded that Rush had asked him to be the pilot to run the Titanic missions, and he turned him down.

"I told him, I'm not getting in it," Nissen said. "He asked me why, and I said, 'Because the operations crew, I don't trust them.'"

"He said, 'Well, what if I'm mission director?'" Nissen continued. "I said, 'You still have the same operations crew.' But I didn't trust Stockton either. Take a look at where we started and when I was hired, nothing that I got was the truth."

The company's former finance director, Bonnie Carl, and Tym Catterson, a former contractor for OceanGate, also testified on Monday.

Carl said she was aware of a conversation between David Lochridge, the former OceanGate operations director, and Renata Rojas, a mission specialist, when Lochridge told Rojas not to go on the Titan, warning that it was "unsafe."

She was also concerned about some of the employees working on OceanGate submersibles.

"There were some young engineers -- and by young, I mean late teens, early 20s -- without any experience we were aware of, wrenching on the sub, and without supervision right there on them," she said. "And that made me nervous."

Former OceanGate employees scheduled to testify later in the hearing include Lochridge; co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein; and Steven Ross, former scientific director, according to a schedule released by the Coast Guard.

The submersible company suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.