Images do not depict wreckage of OceanGate’s Titan Submarine

62

THE ALLEGATION: Images illustrate the wreckage of OceanGate’s Titan submarine following a report from U.S. authorities about the demise of all five passengers on board.

AP’S VERIFICATION: Incorrect. The U.S. Coast Guard validated to The Big Big News that no photographs of the wreckage have been made publicly available so far. Two of the disseminated photos were actually captured in 2004, displaying the wreckage of the Titanic itself; the other image was initially posted on a Twitter account that identifies as a satirical outlet, sharing AI-created visuals.

THE DETAILS: On Thursday, the Coast Guard declared that the submarine, which was transporting five individuals to the Titanic, underwent a catastrophic implosion near the wreck site, resulting in the loss of all lives on board.

ADDITIONAL NEWS
Social media posts misinterpret Biden’s jest about revealing ‘state secrets’
The video doesn’t depict Sam Smith tumbling through the crowd after a botched stage dive
The news of Garth Brooks being ‘booed off stage’ is fabricated. The Texas governor fell for it
The game controller utilized in Titan submarine has not been discovered on the seabed

Hopes of rescuing the five men were extinguished earlier when the submarine’s oxygen was projected to deplete, and wreckage was located around 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic in the North Atlantic.

Post the announcement, social media users falsely professed, in both English and Spanish, that a sequence of photos exhibited the wreckage of the submarine.

“One of the Facebook posts, written in Spanish, says, “Images of the remains found of the #Titan submarine of the Ocean Gate company,” including two pictures of human objects covered in sand and another image with vessel debris.

“OceanGate was located but tragically, none survived,” expressed another Facebook user in English, posting the same photos. “The underwater robot discovered the Titan’s debris on the ocean floor. They found out that there was a devastating implosion as they attempted to surface.”

However, the Coast Guard mentioned that the search team – also involving the U.S. Navy, the Canadian Coast Guard, and OceanGate – hasn’t disclosed any photos or videos of the debris.

“Unless issued from our official press releases or our social media, these photos aren’t verified,” stated the military branch in an email.

In a reverse image search, the AP determined that two of the images, seemingly displaying shoes and kitchen utensils, were captured in 2004 near the Titanic and do not correlate to the Titan’s wreckage.

A caption for one of these images, available in the AP’s archives, reads, “This 2004 photo provided by the Institute for Exploration, Archaeological Oceanography Center/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration illustrates a coat and boots remains in the mud on the seabed near the Titanic’s stern.”

The third image, displaying a boat in the sand, was uploaded from the Twitter account @prince_of_fake, known for its parodic content and sharing of AI-generated visuals.

The Titan departed Sunday afternoon and was reported later that day approximately 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St John’s, Newfoundland, en route to the site where the Titanic sank over a century ago, according to AP reports.

In 2021 and 2022, at least 46 people have successfully made the journey to the Titanic wreck aboard the OceanGate submersible, as per company documents filed in the federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees matters related to the liner’s sinking.
__
This is part of the AP’s commitment to combat widespread online misinformation, including collaborations with external firms and organizations to provide accurate context to circulating misleading content. Learn more about AP’s fact-check

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about OceanGate’s Titan Submarine Wreckage

More about OceanGate’s Titan Submarine Wreckage

• OceanGate’s Titan Submersible
• The U.S. Coast Guard
• The U.S. Navy
• Canadian Coast Guard
• The Associated Press Fact Check
• Twitter Account – Prince of Fake