Debris from the lost submersible Titan has been returned to land after a fatal implosion on a voyage to the wreck of the Titanic earlier this month, with the loss of all five aboard, deep in the North Atlantic.
Piece of the mangled craft were brought ashore in Newfoundland, Canada, on Wednesday morning, in hopes of assisting an investigation into the tragedy and answering questions grow about the craft’s experimental design, safety standards and lack of certification.
Large pieces of metal resembling parts of the Titan’s white hull and landing skids designed for touching down on the seabed were hoisted up at a pier used by the Canadian Coast Guard in St John’s, from a Canadian ship called the Horizon Arctic.
It was also possible to see twisted cables and other items likely involved in the mechanics of the 22ft (6.7-meter) submersible, which was launched with the help of a ship on 18 June to attempt its dive to the Titanic wreck, but lost contact with the surface one hour and 45 minutes later.
Retrieving the debris is a key part of the investigation to establish what went wrong in the operation by the US company owning the submersible, OceanGate, after several years of questions raising serious doubts about the craft’s design.
Titan was declared last Thursday to have been destroyed in the deep ocean, probably as a result of a “catastrophic implosion” around the time it lost communications, killing all five lives onboard.
Prior to the wreckage being found on the ocean floor, not far from the Titanic wreck itself, the world had waited with bated breath for four days after it became public that Titan was missing, many millions tuning into media coverage to see if the sub would be found, during a frantic search as oxygen on board was due to run out if the craft had remained intact with its occupants.
Horizon Arctic carried a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to search the ocean floor near the Titanic wreck for pieces of the submersible. Pelagic Research Services, a company with offices in Massachusetts and New York that owns the ROV, said in a statement on Wednesday that it has completed offshore operations.
Pelagic Research Services said its team is “still on mission” and cannot comment on the Titan investigation, which involves several government agencies in the US and Canada.
“They have 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,” the company’s statement said.
Debris from the Titan was located about 12,500ft (3,810 meters) underwater and roughly 1,600ft (488 meters) from the Titanic on the ocean floor, the Coast Guard said last week.
One of the experts the Coast Guard consulted with during the search said analyzing the physical material of recovered debris could reveal important clues about what happened to the Titan. And there could be electronic data, said Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“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 on Monday.
The National Transportation Safety Board has said the Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a “major marine casualty” and the Coast Guard will lead the investigation.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the US but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. OceanGate is based in Everett, Washington, but closed when the Titan was found.
Meanwhile, the Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada, and those killed were from England, Pakistan, France and the US. The five were OceanGate CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, British adventurer Hamish Harding and French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
