The Titan submersible’s wreckage contains what the US Coast Guard believes to be human remains.
On Wednesday, pieces of the sub, which collapsed while making a deep dive toward the Titanic, were unloaded in St. John’s, Canada.
According to officials, amid the wreckage was the sub’s landing frame and a rear cover.
The presumed remains will be subject to a formal analysis by US medical authorities, according to a statement from the coast guard.
An inquiry into the disaster’s causes is still in its early stages by the agency. The evidence will be transported to a US port by the Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) of the Coast Guard for additional investigation and testing.
There is still a sizable amount of work to be done to comprehend the circumstances surrounding the Titan’s devastating loss and make sure a similar tragedy doesn’t happen again, according to MBI chair Capt Jason Neubauer in a statement.
Capt. Neubauer expressed his gratitude for the coordinated international and interagency assistance in recovering and preserving this crucial evidence at great offshore depths.
On June 18, the ship collapsed about 90 minutes into a dive to see the famed 1912 shipwreck, which is located in the north Atlantic at a depth of 3,800 meters (12,500 feet). All five individuals on board perished.
Stockton Rush, 61, the CEO of OceanGate, the company that planned the dive, was one of the passengers, along with British explorer Hamish Harding, 58, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19, as well as 77-year-old French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Officials had their doubts about the likelihood of finding any bodies at first.
Soon after the loss of the ship was confirmed, Coast Guard Adm John Mauger observed, “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the seafloor.”
At the time, Cpt. Neubauer stated that if human remains were found, investigators would take “all precautions” and that the investigation would probably involve official testimony from witnesses.
The coast guard reports that five significant fragments of the sub have so far been located in a sizable debris field close to the Titanic’s bow.
According to BBC science journalist Jonathan Amos, the debris that washed up on Wednesday looked to comprise at least one titanium end cap, the sub’s porthole with its window missing, a titanium ring, landing frame, and the end equipment bay.
A remotely operated vehicle operated by Pelagic Research Services was aboard the Canadian ship Horizon Arctic, which was in charge of the recovery mission. In a statement released earlier on Wednesday, the business stated that its staff had finished its off-shore operations and was returning to base.
Former employees have expressed worries about the Titan sub, which was not subject to regulation, and former employees have criticized OceanGate for its safety procedures.
Mr. Rush earlier disregarded safety concerns raised by one expert in email communications obtained by the BBC, saying he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation.”
One of the “numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns” noted in an inspection report written by another former OceanGate employee was how the hull had been inspected.
It was “an extremely sad time for our employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss,” OceanGate said in a statement last week.
