'Presumed human remains' discovered in Titan sub wreckage

FILE PHOTO: The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions to explore the wreckage of the sunken SS Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, dives in an undated photograph. OceanGate Expeditions/Handout via REUTERS

FILE PHOTO: The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions to explore the wreckage of the sunken SS Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, dives in an undated photograph. OceanGate Expeditions/Handout via REUTERS

Published Jun 29, 2023

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Washington - Experts have recovered presumed human remains from what is left of the Titan sub that imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck, with the death of five people, the US Coast Guard said Wednesday.

"United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered," the agency said.

On board were British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Stockton Rush, CEO of the sub's operator OceanGate Expeditions.

June 20, 2023, Rescuers face a race against time to find the missing submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic as people trapped inside have roughly 40 hours of breathable air left, U.S. Coast Guard says. Graphic shows details of the accident and of the Titan submersible.

They presumably died instantly when the Titan sub, about the size of an SUV car, imploded under the crushing pressure of the North Atlantic at a depth of more than two miles.

Mangled debris recovered from the small submersible was offloaded earlier in the day in eastern Canada, bringing to an end a difficult search-and-recovery operation.

That debris will now be taken aboard a US Coast Guard cutter to a US port for further analysis, the organization said.

"There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again," said the leader of the US probe into the tragedy, Captain Jason Neubauer.

Television images showed what appeared to be the Titan sub's nose cone and a side panel with electronics and wires hanging out being hoisted from a ship onto a flatbed truck at a Canadian Coast Guard terminal in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Pelagic Research, the New York company that owns the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle used in the search for the ill-fated submersible, said its offshore search-and-recovery operation has wrapped up.

Canadian officials declined to comment on the recovery of the sub debris.

Titan was reported missing on June 18 and the US Coast Guard said last Thursday that all five people aboard the submersible had died after the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion.

A debris field was found on the seafloor, 500 meters from the bow of the Titanic, which sits nearly four kilometers below the ocean's surface and 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

The announcement of the implosion ended a multinational search-and-rescue operation that captured the world's attention since the tourist craft went missing.

The Coast Guard has launched its highest level of probe, called a Marine Board of Investigation, into this accident.

AFP