Authorities on Wednesday said they appear to have recovered human remains within the Titan submersible wreckage that was pulled from the North Atlantic and unloaded at a port in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
An American medical team will analyze the remains as the U.S. Coast Guard begins a high-level investigation into the cause of the Titan’s implosion last week that killed five people, the branch said in a statement. The vessel’s experimental carbon fiber design raised concerns among experts years before its destruction, and it could prompt more regulatory oversight of the submersible industry.
“The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,” Coast Guard Capt. Jason Neubauer, who is leading the investigation, said of the debris pulled out of the ocean on Wednesday. “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.”
The Coast Guard investigation may recommend anything from new laws surrounding deep-sea submersibles to criminal charges for authorities to pursue, Neubauer said Sunday.
A remotely operated underwater vehicle owned by Pelagic Research Services recovered Titan’s debris after it was discovered last week, spokesman Jeff Mahoney said. He declined to comment further on the recovered wreckage, saying the company’s role in the operation was over.
The submersible had been missing for days after it went silent June 18 while attempting to dive to the Titanic wreck site 2.5 miles down on the ocean floor. Authorities and experts now believe the Titan suffered a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber, leading to an implosion that killed all aboard.
The passengers were OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush, 61; British aviation businessman Hamish Harding, 58; retired French navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77; and British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
The debris could tell investigators vital information, including where the Titan’s hull failed, how the submersible’s material was connected and whether any electronics are recoverable, according to J. Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Hartsfield was part of a team advising the Coast Guard during the search for the Titan sub.
“Photos alone don’t tell the story,” Hartsfield told The Post after reviewing footage of the recovered wreckage. “It takes a team of investigators and experts to actually put all the material that they have in context and start to look for a failure.”
Hartsfield said it is unlikely that the submersible had a device specifically designed to record data for investigators to sift through, a role black boxes perform after airplane crashes. However, some of the Titan’s equipment, including hard drives, sonar footage and possibly cameras, could help piece together the accident.
OceanGate, the company that owned the Titan submersible, did not put it through a classification and inspection process that is standard within the submersible industry, though not required by law. Questions about the vessel’s safety were raised by industry professionals years before the accident, as well as in a 2018 lawsuit involving a former employee, who said he encouraged the firm to use the American Bureau of Shipping to inspect and certify the submersible, according to court documents.
“The question everybody wants to know is how to make sure this never happens again,” Hartsfield said, adding that an investigation could take months.
In addition to the U.S. Coast Guard’s investigation of the Titan, Canadian officials are also probing the Polar Prince, a Canadian-flagged ship that launched the submersible into the depths of the North Atlantic. In coming weeks, officials plan to review the information gathered, including preliminary interviews with those aboard the Polar Prince, the vessel’s data recorder and all materials recovered from the wreckage, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said in a statement.
Amanda Coletta, Ben Brasch and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff contributed to this report.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiaWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS93b3JsZC8yMDIzLzA2LzI4L3RpdGFuLXN1Ym1lcnNpYmxlLWh1bWFuLXJlbWFpbnMtZGVicmlzLXJlY292ZXJlZC10aXRhbmljL9IBAA?oc=5
2023-06-29 01:55:00Z
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