Titan Implosion: A Sea of Misery or a Sea of Relation

In June 2023, the Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion that killed its entire crew. Using the contestation of the media framing of this event as a point of departure, this article hypothesises that a lack of sympathy on social media (versus mainstream media) was the result of a political enthusiasm for social change that is absent moral enthusiasm for the crew because the sea has been figured in a way that is symbolically miserable. This figuration (as a constellation of surfaces and depths, beyond and between) is in the service of capital and the maintenance of the nation-state and runs counter to the idea that the sea is a site of relation. It is argued that any ontological challenge to this figuration must be supplemented with a phenomenological account of the sea as an environment of moral experience. This would then encourage political enthusiasm to coincide with moral enthusiasm.