MSN
Rescuers searching for the missing Titanic sub fear they may never be able to recover the bodies of the five people killed on the expedition.
Rear Admiral John Mauger said: “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.
“And so we’ll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time.”
On Thursday night it was reported that the US Navy detected the likely implosion of the Titan submersible on underwater sound monitoring devices shortly after it disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday.
Citing an unnamed senior US Navy official, The Wall Street Journal said the implosion was recorded by a secret acoustic monitoring system designed to detect submarines.
“The US Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” the official told the Journal.
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08:07 AM
‘Blame is not what we should be doing’
When asked about the safety of the Titan submersible, Mr Ramsey explained that lessons need to be learned and questions need to be answered.
He said: “That’s the question that needs to be answered. Most submersibles and all submarines go through a stringent safety process.
“Every time they come back in and every time before they go to sea they do safety checks, check the safety of the hull, state of the hull openings, everything.
“What’s apparent here is they didn’t have to follow the same regulation, and therefore didn’t follow the same regulation. I think that will be where a big focus is.
“That doesn’t mean blame, that’s not what we should be doing, what we should be doing is what’s called adjust culture, where we work out lessons learned and implement them going forward.”
