"Presumed human remains" were "recovered within the wreckage" of the doomed Titan submersible that imploded last week in the North Atlantic while on a dive to the Titanic wreckage site.
The US Coast Guard announced Wednesday that "debris and evidence" of the submersible recovered 2.5 miles down on the ocean floor was unloaded at a port in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. A Coast Guard cutter is expected to transport the mangled sub to a port in the US for further analysis and testing into what caused the implosion, killing five people.
"The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy.
"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," Coast Guard Capt. Jason Neubauer, who is leading the investigation, said of the debris pulled out of the ocean.
The company that owns a remote submersible that recovered Titan's remains, Pelagic Research Services, told The New York Times that it had "successfully completed offshore operations."
Debris and presumed human remains from the Titan submersible have been recovered and returned to land, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Wednesday, nearly a week after a search-and-rescue operation ended and the vessel’s five passengers were presumed dead. https://t.co/6NJiKLON93 pic.twitter.com/YGo9xmwuMO
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 28, 2023
Investigators will be sifting through Titian's carbon fiber and titanium to determine the failure point.
Titian's pieces were loaded onto a truck.
One recognizable piece of the craft is the titanium porthole.
J. Carl Hartsfield, an underwater vehicle designer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told NYTimes investigators would be looking at several things:
- A point of failure of the hull;
- How pieces of carbon fiber and titanium, the submersible's materials, were connected;
- And if any electronic data was recoverable.
So who is paying for the weekslong search-and-rescue effort and the investigation?
