CNN
US medical professionals will analyze “presumed human remains” that were found in the Titan submersible’s wreckage in the North Atlantic Ocean as probes continue into the vessel’s catastrophic implosion.
The OceanGate submersible lost contact with its mother ship, the Polar Prince, shortly after it began descending to the Titanic wreck on the morning of June 18. When the vessel failed to resurface, it sparked a massive, international search and rescue effort that concluded one week ago, when US authorities announced the submersible suffered an implosion and the five men aboard had presumably died.
The US Coast Guard has convened a Marine Board of Investigation – the highest level of investigation it conducts – to probe what caused the tragedy and offer possible recommendations “to the proper authorities to pursue civil or criminal sanctions as necessary,” said Coast Guard Capt. Jason Neubauer, who heads the investigative board.
As part of that probe, investigators will analyze debris from the vessel’s wreckage, collect evidence and conduct witness interviews as well as hold a public hearing for further witness testimony.
On Wednesday, the government branch said the debris and evidence that was recovered from the seafloor at the site of the Titan wreckage had arrived at the Canadian pier of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
That evidence will now be transported to a US port for further analysis and testing, the Coast Guard said in a news release. Part of the evidence that will be analyzed are the presumed human remains, the release said.
“The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,” Neubauer said in a Wednesday statement. “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.”
In a separate news release also issued Wednesday, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) confirmed the Titan wreckage had arrived in the St. John’s port, was inspected and documented and is now in possession of the US Coast Guard.
The Canadian safety board is also conducting its own safety investigation into the operation of the Polar Prince, the submersible’s mother ship, which the board has described as a “Canadian-flagged cargo vessel.”
TSB investigators have collected all documents and conducted preliminary interviews with those aboard the Polar Prince, the agency said. They have also sent the vessel’s voyage data recorder, which stores audio from the ship’s bridge, to an Ottawa laboratory for analysis.
