What’s it really like 12,500 feet below the surface?
A passenger who previously rode on the missing Titanic research submersible is here to explain.
As Aaron Newman—an investor in OceanGate who toured the wreckage 350 miles off the coast of Canada in 2021—put it, the expedition as “basically going to another planet.”
“You’re getting in this craft—you’re bolted in,” he told Today on June 21. “It’s a tube that’s comfortable, but not spacious.”
In the beginning, the submersible’s cabin is “very hot and stuffy,” but Newman said the water surrounding the vessel drops to 29 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit as it submerges deeper into the ocean.
“By the time you hit the bottom, the water down there is below what standard freezing temperature is,” he explained. “That’s going to conduct right through that metal, so it was cold when we were at the bottom. You had to layer up—we had wool hats on and were doing everything to stay warm at that bottom.”
