A video clip features audio of “banging” coming from the lost Titan submersible.
There is no evidence this audio is genuine, and the authorities have not officially released any audio from the search. It has been confirmed that the Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing all five people on board.
A video shared hundreds of times on Facebook falsely claims to feature “audio of the noises from the missing Titanic submarine”.
The sounds of water, beeps and sporadic banging can be heard in the clip, which appears to have been originally posted to TikTok on 21 June where it has been viewed more than 12 million times.
The video also features a picture of the OceanGate Titan submersible, which went missing on 18 June while on a tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck—almost 4,000 metres below sea level.
A huge search was launched in order to locate the submersible after it lost contact with the launch vessel.
However, on 22 June it was confirmed that the submersible had in fact suffered a “catastrophic implosion”, killing everyone on board.
The day before it was reported that a Canadian aircraft involved in the search for the submersible had detected “banging” in 30 minute intervals, leading to further resources being deployed in the area.
The detection of “underwater noises” was later confirmed by the US Coast Guard. However, no further detail was provided and, crucially, no audio was officially released by the authorities.
There is no evidence that the audio shared on social media is genuine. Robert Hodges, a Coast Guard spokesperson told fact checkers at AP on 23 June: “The Coast Guard has not released any audio in relation to the search efforts.”
Misinformation about the Titan submersible has flourished online in the wake of the vessel’s disappearance. Following confirmation that debris from the sub had been located during the search, Full Fact checked a number of posts falsely claiming to show the wreckage—including several which appear to have been generated using Artificial Intelligence.
Misleading images and videos are some of the most common kinds of misinformation we see online, but they can sometimes be hard to spot. It’s always worth checking if a social media video shows what the post says it does before you share it—we have written a guide on how to do so here.
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Image courtesy of Michael Benz |
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because no audio of the search has been released by authorities.
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