The remains at the bottom of the ocean could give clues to what happened to the submarine

(Trends Wide) — Investigators continue to scour the ocean floor for information about how a “catastrophic implosion” killed all five passengers on a Titanic-bound submarine that suddenly lost communication with its mother ship last weekend, authorities said.

A one-day international search effort wrapped up Thursday after wreckage from the Titanic submersible was found about 1,600 feet (487 meters) from the historic wreck of the Titanic. Military experts found the wreckage to be consistent with the disastrous loss of the small craft’s pressure chamber, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger announced.

The passengers who died were a British businessman of Pakistani origin, Shahzada, and his son, Suleman Dawood; British businessman Hamish Harding; the French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and Stockton Rush, CEO of the vessel’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions.

While officials work to determine the schedule and circumstances of the accident, remotely operated vehicles will be used to map the Titan’s debris field more than 3 km deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, Mauger said.

Meanwhile, Titan’s mother ship is leaving the search area on Friday and is expected to return to the port of St. John’s, Newfoundland, early Saturday, a source with Horizon Maritime, the company that owns the ship, told Miguel Trends Wide’s Marquez. Vessel traffic monitoring sites this Friday morning show a line of ships returning to St. John’s.

Authorities have yet to conclusively determine whether the devastating implosion occurred at the time the submersible stopped communicating, about 1 hour and 45 minutes after its dive, Mauger said.

A Navy review of acoustic data detected an “anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” Sunday in the general area the Titan was diving into when it went quiet, a senior Navy official told Trends Wide. The information was “immediately shared” with on-scene commanders leading the search and used to narrow the search area, the official said. It was determined that the sound was “not final” and “the decision was made to continue our mission as search and rescue and do everything possible to save the lives on board.”

Once the search began, crews had sonar buoys in the water “almost continuously” and did not detect any “catastrophic events,” Mauger said.

When asked if human remains can be recovered, Mauger noted the “incredibly unforgiving environment” and added: “I don’t have an answer for prospects at this point.” A medical expert said a deep-sea implosion would leave no recoverable debris.

“There would be practically nothing,” Dr. Aileen Marty, a Disaster Medicine expert at Florida International University, told Trends Wide’s Anderson Cooper. “It’s highly unlikely that they’ll find any human tissue there.”

OceanGate touted its dives as a “truly extraordinary” once-in-a-lifetime experience amid a growing adventure tourism industry for the ultra-rich. A seat on an expedition to the Titanic costs each passenger $250,000, an archived version of OceanGate’s website shows.

But the tragedy has renewed scrutiny of OceanGate’s operations and the development of the 20-foot, 22,000-pound Titan ship, amid growing reports of safety concerns, mechanical problems and an alleged disregard for regulatory processes.

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein called the deaths a “tragic loss for the families and for the ocean exploration community at large” and noted the risk inherent in such voyages.

“Those of us in the community who work at that depth know that that is always a risk,” Sohnlein told Trends Wide on Thursday. “There is such intense downward pressure that if there is a failure, it is an instant, catastrophic failure.”

OceanGate co-founder defends submarine deployment

As OceanGate faces questions about its operations and safety practices in the wake of the Titan’s fatal implosion, Sohnlein also defended the company’s approach to designing and deploying the vessel.

Sohnlein had “full faith” in co-founder Rush, who had previously expressed skepticism about regulations that could slow innovation, he said.

“I broke some rules to do this,” Rush told travel blogger Alan Estrada of the Titan, in 2021.

Rush wasn’t a “risk taker,” he was a “risk manager,” Sohnlein said.

“We won’t know anything until the investigation is complete and all the data is collected, so I’ll reserve judgment,” Sohnlein said. “But I’ve known him for 15 years, and none of this would change my mind.”

“There are teams at the site that will still be collecting data for the next few days, weeks, maybe months, and it will be a long time before we know exactly what happened there,” Sohnlein said Friday morning. “It would encourage us to postpone speculation until we have more data to go on.”

At least two former OceanGate employees raised safety concerns about the development of the ship’s hull years ago, including the testing procedures and the thickness of its carbon fiber structure, Trends Wide reported.

The remains of the submarine were found on Thursday

Additionally, the uncertainty following a test dive on the Titan in 2021 led Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” host Josh Gates and his crew to decide not to film a segment on the ship, as “we had left Of course, at that time, there were many things that needed to be resolved with the submarine,” he said.

“A lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t. We had problems with the thrusters and problems with computer control and things like that,” Gates said. “In the end, it was a challenging dive.”

The company has also dealt with a series of mechanical problems and adverse weather conditions that have forced trips to be canceled or delayed in recent years, according to court records.

The difficulties led to a pair of lawsuits in which some high-paying customers tried to recover the cost of tours they said they didn’t take and claimed the company overstated its ability to reach the Titanic wreckage.

OceanGate did not respond to the claims in court and could not be reached for comment.

They mourn the loss of intrepid adventurers

In addition to Rush, who was piloting the Titan expedition, the victims include two veteran explorers and a father-and-son duo from a prominent British business family of Pakistani origin.

Acclaimed French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet was accompanying the mission as a content expert intimately familiar with the Titanic wreckage, according to OceanGate’s archived website.

Nargeolet served as director of Underwater Research at RMS Titanic Inc., the company that holds exclusive rights to salvage artifacts from the ship. He made 35 dives on the wreck and oversaw the recovery of 5,000 artifacts, according to his biography on the company’s website.

The diver’s family remembered him as a loving father and husband who “will be remembered as one of the greatest deep-sea explorers in modern history.”

“But what we will remember him for the most is his big heart, his amazing sense of humor and how much he loved his family. We will miss him today and every day for the rest of our lives,” his wife and children said in a statement Thursday.

Hamish Harding, a British businessman with a notable resume of extreme expeditions, has been on several record-breaking voyages. He was a member of a flight crew, in 2019, that broke the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the world through both poles and, in 2020, he became one of the first people to dive into the Challenger Deep, in the Pacific Ocean, believed to be the deepest point in the world’s oceans.

The globetrotter owned the Action Aviation aircraft brokerage and was loved by his wife and two children, his family said in a statement.

“He was a passionate explorer, no matter the terrain, who lived his life for his family, his business and for the next adventure,” the statement said. “What he accomplished in his life was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved.”

Pakistani-born British billionaire Shahzada Dawood and her son Suleman were also on the Titan. His family business, Dawood Hercules Corp., is one of Pakistan’s largest corporations.

“Please continue to keep the souls of the departed and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning,” the family patriarch, Hussain Dawood, and his wife, Kulsum, said in a statement Thursday.

Shahzada Dawood was smart and always curious, her friend Bill Diamond told Trends Wide on Wednesday. He didn’t think of Dawood as an adventurer, but he believes he was aware of the risks of the Titan voyage, Diamond said.

Trends Wide’s Oren Liebermann, Curt Devine, Isabelle Chapman, Gabe Cohen, Kristina Sgueglia, Nouran Salahieh, Priscilla Alvarez, Mostafa Salem, Sofia Cox and Hira Humayun contributed to this report.