The U.S. Coast Guard announced on June 28 that it had found bodies inside the wreckage of the Titan submersible, which tragically imploded during an expedition to the Titanic.
American medical experts will analyze the recovered bodies, according to The Guardian.
“The evidence will provide investigators with crucial insights into the causes of this tragedy,” said Jason Neubauer, head of the Marine Board of Investigation. He emphasized that there is still much work to be done to understand the factors that led to the Titan submersible tragedy and to help ensure that similar incidents do not occur again.
Debris Found
The wreckage of the ill-fated vessel was brought ashore in Newfoundland, Canada, on the morning of June 28. Authorities hope that the debris will clarify the investigation into the tragedy and answer questions regarding the design testing, safety standards, and lack of certification of the vessel.
Large metal fragments resembling parts of the Titan’s white hull and launch struts were hoisted at a dock used by the Canadian Coast Guard in St. John’s from a Canadian ship named Horizon Arctic.
Debris from the Titan submersible being brought up in St. John’s on June 28. (Photo: Paul Daly/AP).
Also visible were twisted cables and other items that may relate to the mechanical components of the 6.7-meter-long submersible.
The Titan was reported missing on June 18 (local time), at a location approximately 700 km south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. At the time it went missing, the vessel was en route to the site where the Titanic sank over a century ago.
The pilot of the Titan was Stockton Rush, CEO of the company leading the expedition. His passengers included a British explorer, two members of a Pakistani business family, and a Titanic expert.
The Titan’s operations were organized by OceanGate Expeditions, an underwater exploration company. Since 2021, this company has been monitoring the condition of the Titanic and its surrounding ecosystem through annual expeditions.
Significant Discovery
The discovery and retrieval of debris is a crucial part of the investigation to determine what happened during the OceanGate operations, which have raised serious questions about the design of the submersible over the years.
On June 22, the U.S. Coast Guard stated that the Titan had been “crushed” in the area near the Titanic wreck, resulting in the immediate death of all five people aboard.
Before the wreckage of the submersible was found on the ocean floor, not far from the Titanic wreck, the world held its breath for four days after the Titan disappeared, with millions following media coverage of the race against time to locate the vessel due to limited oxygen onboard.
The Horizon Arctic of Canada was equipped with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to search for the wreckage of the submersible on the ocean floor near the Titanic wreck.
Pelagic Research Services, a company based in Massachusetts and New York that owns the ROV, stated in a release on June 28 that it had completed offshore operations.
The wreckage from the Titan lies approximately 3,810 meters underwater and about 488 meters from the Titanic, the U.S. Coast Guard reported last week.
The analysis of the recovered debris could reveal vital clues about what happened to the Titan. (Photo: AP).
Carl Hartsfield from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the experts consulted by the U.S. Coast Guard during the search, stated that analyzing the recovered debris could provide crucial clues about what happened to the Titan.
The expert suggested that there might still be electronic data.
“Definitely, all equipment on any deep-sea vehicle records data,” he said on June 26.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board announced that the Coast Guard had declared the Titan submersible’s disappearance a “major maritime accident,” and the Coast Guard would lead the investigation.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owns and operates the Titan, is based in the U.S., but the submersible is registered in the Bahamas. OceanGate is headquartered in Everett, Washington, but that facility was closed when the Titan was found.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board has also confirmed that it is conducting an investigation into the Titan submersible disaster during the Titanic expedition.
Investigators boarded the Polar Prince, the mothership of the Titan submersible, to collect information from the voyage data recorder and various other systems. They interviewed crew members aboard and gathered data from the ship’s log, including recordings, to understand what happened to the Titan.
