The U.S. Coast Guard recovered “presumed human remains” from the imploded Titan Submersible debris Wednesday.
The Coast Guard discovered the evidence from the seafloor where the submersible imploded, killing five people, according to the agency’s press release. The M/V HORIZON ARCTIC, which discovered the evidence, arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday.
The Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) plans to transport the suspected human remains aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter to a U.S. port to conduct further testing, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
“I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,” MBI Chair Captain Jason Neubauer said in the 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.”
U.S. Coast Guard recovers evidence from TITAN submersible https://t.co/Vbhbxx97cF
— U.S. Coast Guard (@uscoastguard) June 28, 2023
The submersible departed from St. John’s on June 18 to travel to the long-sunken Titanic, but lost contact with its mother ship less than two hours later. Prior to the confirmation of an implosion, experts predicted the submersible would run out of oxygen by Thursday as it was equipped with 96 hours of breathable air. (RELATED: ‘Impossible For Me To Process’: James Cameron Describes Sub Design Problems, Reflects On Expedition To View Wreckage)
The victims were identified as British billionaire Hamish Harding, French oceanographer and Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, Pakistani business mogul Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
After an intense search for the submarine, the U.S. Coast Guard found debris on June 22 and announced the submersible had suffered a “catastrophic implosion.”
Expert G. Michael Harris told Fox News the victims did not suffer from the implosion given that it takes two nanoseconds for the ship to explode and four nanoseconds for it to register to the human brain.