Titan submarine fragments and presumed human remains have been found - video

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The US Coast Guard has returned to the harbor after picking up debris of the Titan submarine and probable remains of the crew from the ocean floor.

Fragments of Titan Submarine

The U.S. Coast Guard has announced that it may have found presumed human remains from the wreckage of the Titan submarine and intends to bring them back to the United States. The unit imploded last week, killing all five people on board. At the time, the craft was on its way to the wreck of the ship RMS Titanic, which sank in 1912.

The transportation on Wednesday of pieces of the Titan sub to the port of St. John’s, Newfoundland, was a key part of the investigation into the cause of the vessel’s implosion. The twisted fragments of the submarine were unloaded at a Canadian Coast Guard pier. Many also pointed out that this tragic accident should result in legislation that will prevent another similar tragedy in the future.

“I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,” U.S. Coast Guard Chief Capt. Jason Neubauer said in a statement. “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.”

From aboard of the Canadian ship Horizon Arctic, specialists conducted a search using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The unmanned robot with a camera system searched the ocean floor near the Titanic wreck for fragments of the submarine.

“Due to the physical and mental challenges of this operation, our people worked 24/7 for ten consecutive days. Now they are looking forward to completing the mission and returning to their families.” – Jeff Mahoney, a spokesman for Pelagic Research Services, said.

Investigation

From what the Coast Guard has reported, we know that Titan’s remains were on the ocean floor at a depth of about 3,810 meters, about 488 meters from the wreck of the Titanic. An investigation into the cause of the underwater vessel’s implosion on June 18 is currently underway. Officials announced on June 22 that the submarine had imploded and all five people on board had died.

Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the experts the Coast Guard consulted during the search, said analysis of the physical material from the recovered debris could reveal important clues about what happened.

“Certainly all the instruments on any deep sea vehicle, they record data. They pass up data. So the question is, is there any data available? And I really don’t know the answer to that question,” he said Monday.

Investigators still have a tremendous amount of work to do. However, with the evidence they have obtained, they will have a chance to determine the course of events on the day of the disaster, when the Titan submarine imploded. For now, it’s hard to estimate how long it will take specialists to examine the remains and what the results of their investigation might be.

The submarine crew

The victims of the Titan submarine disaster are the head of OceanGate, the company to which the boat belonged and also a pilot, Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, British explorer Hamish Harding and French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

OceanGate Inc. is an American privately owned company based in Everett, Washington, that provides crewed submersibles for tourism, industry, research, and exploration. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein.

Photo: Screenshot from the YouTube video