All Five People Aboard OceanGate Submersible Declared Dead After Evidence of 'Catastrophic Implosion'
All five people aboard the deep-sea submersible Titan by OceanGate have been declared dead by the United States Coast Guard after they discovered fragments of the submersible in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Coast Guard believes that the pressure of the ocean 13,000 feet below sea level caused the submersible to experience “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle,” said US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger to reporters.
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The five people who lost their lives on the Titan were British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, British businessman Hamish Harding, former French Navy diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush.
The location of the debris field near the Titanic suggests that the Titan imploded on June 18, the same day it disappeared, as the vehicle neared the Titanic shipwreck. New details from the U.S. Navy supports this as the Navy reportedly detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday, although the sound was not “definitive.”
For the last few days, rescue operations hinged on hope after sonar buoys picked up banging sounds on Tuesday and Wednesday. However, officials revealed that analysis showed the sounds were inconclusive and likely came from something else.
“There doesn’t appear to be any relation between the noises and the location of the debris field on the sea floor,” Mauger said on Thursday.
As the inter-agency effort works toward retrieving debris, Mauger says that robotic crafts on the ocean floor will continue to search for victims’ bodies, although the likelihood of finding their remains in the deep sea is slim.
