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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

It's not clear from the headline - but the debris field is on the ocean floor and was found via the USGC's remote operated submersible vehicle.

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Yes on the sea floor but according to BBC:

> Debris patch was found by an ROV from the Horizon Arctic, a Canadian commercial vessel which arrived last night near the Titanic wreckage site.

> It was loaded with support equipment and was also carrying an Odysseus 6k ROV that can reach depths of 6,000m.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-65967464?at_bb...

Yep, fair point - found not by not the USCG itself but by the Canadian merchant vessel assisting in the search.

Thanks - maybe we'll switch to that URL since it has more up-to-date information.

(Submitted URL was https://twitter.com/USCGNortheast/status/1671907901542211584)

From the article it seems like this ROV doesn't have sonar, and can only search visually at a short distance. They claim a distance of around 20 feet. I'm surprised they could find a debris field so fast with such a small range of observation.

Turns out that the debris field was only a few hundred meters from the bow of the Titanic which is approximately where they lost contact in the water column, so I suspect their search consisted of diving to the last known location of the Titan and then just going to the sea floor from there.

It appears to me that for all the rushing about (which was appropriate and neccessary if there were any surviors or surface debris to be found at all) the somewhat grim reality is:

1) hydrophones heard it implode at the same time it lost contact

2) it took until early 6/22 to get a deep-diving ROV on site

3) once the ROV got to the bottom, it swiftly found the debris from the implosion as expected

Wait, do you have a link for "hydrophones heard it implode at the same time it lost contact" part?

EDIT: Looks like the US Navy heard it happen, as per the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-imp...

EDIT2: HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36439661

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/jun/22/titanic-s...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-imp...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12224913/Top-secret...

For a two mile journey, I'd say they basically made it to the Titanic.

"Deepest condolences offered to families - US Coast Guard"

kind of funny pun...

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