On Thursday, authorities gave the worst possible explanation for what happened to the submarine that vanished on Sunday while transporting five passengers to the Titanic ruins. They claimed that it had collapsed only a few hours after it left.
However, authorities claimed to have heard enigmatic hammering sounds from beneath the ocean’s surface throughout the investigation. Many onlookers wondered what was making those sounds if the sub was already gone.
In the early hours of Wednesday, officials said they had discovered underwater noises in the region where they were looking for the missing submarine Titan. They claimed to have picked up the sounds on Tuesday night and Wednesday. They were reported as hammering noises that occurred at intervals of around 30 minutes.
Later, a Navy representative said that the sonobuoys—devices that utilize sonar to detect items underwater—that were dropped by Canadian P-8 planes as part of the global search operation had picked up the noises.
There might be various reasons, according to Carl Hartsfield, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a specialist in underwater acoustics, whose team was assisting in the search.
He explained that the ocean is a highly complex environment with human and natural sounds, making it often quite challenging to identify their origins.
But when authorities provided their somber update on Thursday, stating that the sub’s debris had been discovered in pieces on the ocean floor following a “catastrophic implosion,” a timetable started to emerge suggesting the missing crew could not have made the noises.
A U.S. Navy official stated the Navy discovered “an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion” immediately after the sub lost touch with the surface on Sunday. According to the official, the Coast Guard received and utilized the information to enlarge the search area.
Social media is flooded with videos that purport to have audio of the sounds the search team heard. Sonar beeps may be heard in the audio, followed by hammering and clanging noises. More than 11 million people have seen one Tiktok video, which has led many people to doubt the details provided by search officials.
The audio, however, has nothing to do with this incident. The U.S. Coast Guard, which was in charge of the worldwide search operation, said they had not released any audio concerning the search efforts.
