“United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered,” the agency said.
British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Stockton Rush, CEO of the sub’s operating company OceanGate Expeditions, were all on board the submersible.
They most likely perished instantly when the Titan sub, which was about the size of an SUV, imploded at a depth of more than two miles beneath the crushing pressure of the North Atlantic.
A challenging search and recovery effort came to an end earlier that day when mangled debris from the small submersible was offloaded in eastern Canada.
According to the group, the debris will now be transported onboard a US Coast Guard cutter to a US port for additional analysis.
According to Captain Jason Neubauer, head of the US investigation into the incident, “There is still a significant 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.”
At a Canadian Coast Guard station in St. John’s, Newfoundland, television photos showed what appeared to be the Titan sub’s nose cone and a side panel with electronics and wires hanging out being hauled from a ship onto a flatbed truck.
The offshore search-and-recovery mission has been completed, according to Pelagic Research, the New York-based business that owns the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle employed in the search for the tragic submersible.
Officials from Canada chose not to comment on the debris retrieved from the sub. Titan was reported missing on June 18; on Thursday, the US Coast Guard confirmed that all five occupants of the submersible had perished in a tragic implosion.
Nearly four kilometers below the ocean’s surface, 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, a debris field was discovered on the bottom 500 meters from the Titanic’s bow.
An international search and rescue operation that had the world’s attention since the missing tourist vessel went missing concluded with the revelation of the implosion.
A Marine Board of Investigation, the Coast Guard’s highest level of investigation, has been opened into this disaster.