All planned expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic have been canceled after this month’s deadly sub disaster — and it will likely be years till another human sets eyes on the ghostly site, according to industry groups.
The Explorers Club told The Post it knows of no plans still in place for scientific exploratory trips to the Titanic’s final resting spot 12,500 feet below the ocean’s surface — while commercial expeditions appear to also have been grounded — after the implosion of the only tourist craft taking people to it.
The famed club — a New York-based organization focused on scientific expeditions and advancements worldwide — boasts international members who included Hamish Harding, one of the five people killed in the Titan submersible tragedy.
David Scott-Beddard, CEO of White Star Memories Ltd., a UK Titanic artifact company, said he does not anticipate future expeditions to the famed wreck “in my lifetime,” either.
“The chances of any future research being carried out on the wreck of Titanic is extremely slim,” Scott-Beddard told CNN. “I imagine there will be an inquiry, no doubt, after this disaster and much more stringent rules and regulations will be put in place.”
OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan submersible was carrying its founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, 61, Harding, 58, famed Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, and business tycoon Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Sulaiman when it descended into the Atlantic Ocean early June 18 bound for the wreckage more than 400 miles from the coast of Newfoundland.
Experts have estimated that the sub reached just shy of 10,000 feet below the surface — roughly an hour and 45 minutes into its two-hour expedition — when communications were lost with its OceanGate mothership.
After several days of a dramatic search that riveted the world, the US Coast Guard announced Thursday it had found an array of debris on the ocean floor about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic indicating that the sub suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” instantly killing all aboard.
The bodies of the sub’s five occupants are unlikely to ever be recovered, experts have said.
Harding wrote in an eerie Facebook post the day before his death that the group’s expedition to the Titanic would probably be the only one for the year, attributing the lack of anticipated deep-sea trips to Newfoundland’s harsh winter.
“Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023,” the billionaire wrote. “A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
Authorities are working to determine whether the disaster warrants a criminal investigation, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Kent Osmond said Saturday.
“Such an investigation will proceed only if our examination of the circumstances indicate criminal, federal or provincial laws may possibly have been broken,” Osmond told reporters.
Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada visited the Polar Prince, the OceanGate Titan sub’s lead ship, Saturday “to collect information from the vessel’s voyage data recorder and other vessel systems that contain useful information,” TSB Chairwoman Kathy Fox told CNN.
Fox said the agency wants to “find out what happened and why and to find out what needs to change to reduce the chance or the risk of such occurrences in the future.”
She said voice recordings “could be useful in our investigation” but insisted that the investigation’s purpose was not to affix blame.
