Debris and presumed human remains from the Titan submersible have been recovered and returned to land, the US Coast Guard announced on Wednesday night, nearly a week after an international search-and-rescue operation ended and the vessel’s five passengers were presumed dead.
At a Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday, crews unloaded what appeared to be the Titan’s 22-foot hull, crinkled and twisted with exposed wires and cables. Images from The Canadian Press showed what looked to be a piece of the hull’s siding and other debris being unloaded from the Horizon Arctic, a vessel that had deployed a remotely operated vehicle to search the ocean floor for the submersible.
The debris will be taken to a US port where the Marine Board of Investigation will do further analysis and testing. United States medical professionals “will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered within the wreckage at the site of the incident,” the Coast Guard said in a statement.
In a statement, Pelagic Research Services, which led the deep sea recovery effort, said it had “successfully completed offshore operations” and was in the process of demobilisation, which marks the end of a mission and a return to the base of operations. The company would not confirm that the debris belonged to the Titan.
A crew has been “working around the clock now for 10 days, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and are anxious to finish the mission and return to their loved ones,” Pelagic Research Services said in its statement.
J. Carl Hartsfield, an underwater vehicle designer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said that recovered debris could contain vital information about what exactly had happened to the Titan. Hartsfield said investigators would be looking for three things: a point of failure of the hull, how pieces of carbon fibre and titanium, the submersible’s materials, were connected; and if any electronic data was recoverable.
New York Times News Service
