'Human remains' have likely been recovered from wreckage of Titanic submersible: US Coast Guard

The US Coast Guard on Wednesday said that human remains have likely been recovered from the wreckage of the submersible that imploded during an underwater voyage to view the Titanic. This came hours after the announcement that debris from the Titan, collected from the seafloor more than 12,000 feet (3,658 meters) below the surface of the North Atlantic, had arrived in St John’s, Newfoundland.

Coast Guard Chief Capt Jason Neubauer, in a statement released late Wednesday afternoon, said that 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, reported Associated Press. The “presumed human remains” will be brought to the United States, where medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis, Neubauer said.

He added that the Coast Guard has convened an investigation of the implosion at the highest level. The Marine Board of Investigation will analyze and test evidence, including pieces of debris, at a port in the US. The board will share the evidence at a future public hearing whose date has not been determined, the Coast Guard said.

A deep-sea submersible carrying five people on a voyage to the century-old wreck of the Titanic was found in pieces from a "catastrophic implosion" that killed everyone aboard, the U.S. Coast Guard had said. The Titan, operated by the US-based company OceanGate Expeditions, had been missing since it lost contact with its surface support ship on June 18 morning about an hour, 45 minutes into what should have been a two-hour dive to the world's most famous shipwreck.

Stockton Rush, the Titan’s pilot and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned the submersible, was killed in the implosion along with two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Search teams and support personnel from the U.S., Canada, France and Britain had spent days scanning thousands of square miles of open seas with planes and ships for any sign of the Titan.

(With agency inputs)

Also Read: Competition Commission only following laid down procedures in Air India-Vistara merger