WASHINGTON: Experts have recovered presumed human remains from what is left of the Titanic sub that imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck, with the death of five people, the US Coast Guard said Wednesday (Jun 28).
“United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered,” the agency said.
On board the Titan 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.
They presumably died instantly when the Titan, about the size of an SUV car, imploded under the crushing pressure of the North Atlantic at a depth of more than two miles (3.2km).
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 organisation 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.
Source: CNA
