The Oceangate submersible Titan.Photo:Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
After the submersible imploded during its latest journey,killing all five passengers on board, a First Coast Guard District official revealed that officials will continue to look into what happened in the area where debris was discovered, perAssociated Press,
“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told the news agency, calling it a “complex case."
The U.S. Coast Guard said on Friday that anofficial investigation has not yet been launched, and that it must determine between several agencies who has the jurisdiction and authority to lead said inquiry — between the U.S. Coast Guard, which led the search and rescue mission, the Canadian Coast Guard and others, per the outlet.
The agencies involved are still looking for clues as to what could’ve caused the sub’s implosion this week.
JOEL SAGET,HANDOUT/Dirty Dozen Productions/OceanGat/AFP via Getty Images
On Thursday,OceanGate announcedthat the five people onboard the then-missing submersible had died after an ROV discovered debris 1,600 feet from the bough of the tailbone of the ‘Titanic’ wreckage on the sea floor. At the time, the Coast Guard revealed that the debris was consistent with the catastrophic loss of pressure in the ‘Titan’ chamber.
Mauger shared afterward that two ROVs from both France and Canada are continuing to map the debris fields as authorities will “continue to work and continue to search the area down there,” perABC News. He noted that he doesn’t “have an answer for a prospect at this time,” when asked about locating the bodies of the five passengers — Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
“This is something that happened in a remote part of the ocean with people from different countries around the world and so it is a complex case to work through. But I’m confident that those questions will begin to get answers,” Mauger said. “Right now, our thoughts are with the families and making sure that they have an understanding as best as we can provide of what happened and begin to find some closure.”
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Ryan Ramsey, former submarine captain in Britain’s Royal Navy, told theBBCthat investigators will have to gather debris to determine the cause of the implosion, and that looking for the site of a rupture in the sub' structure will be difficult given that the ROVs must collect small pieces of theTitan.
“There is no black box, so you are not going to be able to track the last movements of the vessel itself,” he said, “But otherwise the process of investigation is not dissimilar to that of an airplane crash.”
The pieces of carbon fiber will then be analyzed at the surface and with a microscope — in an effort to find tears that would point to the rupture site, per the BBC.
AsPEOPLE previously reported, the five passengers aboard theTitanlikely “died instantly” when the submersible imploded, according to journalist Josh Dean, who has written extensively about deep sea exploration.
“It’s a deeply tragic, terrible thing,” added Dean, also the husband of PEOPLE contributor Gillian Telling. “I’ve often heard it described as happening faster than the brain can process what’s happening.”
The Oceangate submersible Titan.Alamy Stock Photo
After the reporteddeaths of its five passengerswere announced on Thursday, U.S. Navy officialsshared withThe Wall Street Journalthat a top-secret military acoustic detection system heard what was believed to be theTitansubmersible implosion hours after the submersiblebegan its voyage on Sunday.
source: people.com
