Find Fragments of submarine Titanic 2023
The US Coast Guard said debris recovered from a submersible that tragically blew up while on a trip to see the wreck of the Titanic last week contained “body parts believed to be human remains.” People”.
The salvaged pieces of the Titan were unloaded from the Canada Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard dock in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday morning.
The US Coast Guard said later on Wednesday that it had received debris and evidence, including “presumptive human remains” that had been recovered from the ocean floor in The incident left five people dead.
The Coast Guard said the evidence will be shipped to a US port for “further analysis and testing” by the Maritime Investigations Commission.
“The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with important insights into the causes of this tragedy,” said Maritime Inquiry Council Chairman Captain Jason Neubauer in a statement. An announcement. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to understand the factors that led to TITAN’s catastrophic loss and help ensure a similar tragedy doesn’t happen again.”
The Maritime Investigations Commission has been in contact with the families of those on board the Titan, a source familiar with the situation told ABC News.
The development comes nearly a week after a remote-controlled vehicle discovered the remains of the missing OceanGate submersible on the ocean floor. Debris, including the cone’s stern, was found about 500 meters from the wreck of the Titanic’s bow on June 22, four days after the launch of the fateful tourist expedition.
MORE: Timeline of the missing Titanic tourist submersible
According to Rear Admiral John Mauger, commander of the 1st Coast Guard District, additional debris was found “consistent with a severe loss of pressure chamber”.
The Canadian Coast Guard said at the time it would remain on the scene and “provide assistance and support for recovery and salvage operations as required by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center.” in Boston.”
The US Coast Guard, which is leading an investigation into the deadly incident, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, said it would “contribute to their efforts”.
Former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Tom Haueter called the probe “uncharted territory” that could take “months” to analyze the faults.
“This is the first fatality on a passenger submarine that I can think of and certainly the first to go into the Titanic at this depth,” Haueter told ABC News.
Haueter said much of the investigation will involve metallurgists examining the submersible’s material to see if it could cause damage. The area of the pressure vessel – the passenger compartment – could also reveal what went wrong, he said.
“Is it because the hatch is broken or is it the latches on the hatch? Is it part of the composite shell?” Haueter said. “And look at all these different pieces, are there fatigue cracks?”
He said investigators will also look into its design, diving history and maintenance. What he learns could improve what he calls a very small industry.
“I think there are things they will be able to learn to say, OK, if we do this again and allow people to go down to these incredible depths and amazingly high pressure, here it is. are things that need to be considered when developing these types of vehicles,” says Haueter.
On Wednesday evening, Canada’s TSB, which is assisting with the investigation, said in a statement that it had completed “collecting relevant documents and completed preliminary interviews with those on Polar Prince support ship.”
TSB collected Polar Prince’s cruise data recorder and sent it to the Canadian group’s engineering lab in Ottawa, Canada, for further analysis.
Over the weekend, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police also said it was “looking into the circumstances” of the deaths aboard the Titan and would launch a full investigation if “the circumstances suggest that criminal, federal or the province may have been violated.”