Five people aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible died when the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreckage of the Titanic, the U.S. Coast Guard announced on June 22.
The submersible went missing on June 18. VERIFY and other news outlets reported in the days after the vessel’s disappearance that it was piloted with a video game controller.
After the submersible’s implosion, a viral photo shared on social media claimed to show that controller found on the ocean floor.
“The cheapest part survived,” one person wrote in a viral tweet.
VERIFY readers Zach and Ryan also asked if the photos showing the Titan submersible’s controller are real.
THE QUESTION
Is the photo claiming to show the Titan submersible controller on the ocean floor real?
THE SOURCES
- U.S. Coast Guard
- Pelagic Research Services
- RevEye, a reverse image search tool
- BBC article published in 2020
- VERIFY image analysis
THE ANSWER
No, the photo claiming to show the Titan submersible controller on the ocean floor is not real. It’s a doctored image created using a 2015 photo of the ocean floor.
WHAT WE FOUND
The image circulating online does not show the video game controller that piloted the Titan submersible found on the ocean floor. It’s actually a 2015 photo of the ocean floor that has been doctored to include the video game controller.
Using RevEye, a reverse image search tool, VERIFY traced the original photo back to a 2020 BBC article about research into the impacts of deep sea mining.
The photo caption says it was taken in 2015 and attributes the image to a project run by GEOMAR, an ocean research institute.
A side-by-side image analysis also shows that the video game controller was edited into the fake photo. The controller does not appear in the original photo captured by GEOMAR and published by BBC.
Images of the Titan's debris field have not been released to the public.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard, which is leading the investigation into the submersible’s implosion, told VERIFY the agency has not released any imagery of the wreckage.
Pelagic Research Services, a Massachusetts-based company whose remotely operated vehicle (ROV) found the Titan’s debris field, also said in a Facebook post that it would not release photos from the debris site.
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