The U.S. Coast Guard has confirmed that debris discovered close to the wreckage of the Titanic is from the OceanGate submersible. According to CNN:
The debris discovered within the search area of the missing Titanic submersible has been assessed to be from the external body of the sub, according to a memo reviewed by CNN. The search for the crew capsule of the Titan vessel continues, the memo says.
The debris was located on the ocean floor, roughly 500 meters off of the bow of the Titanic, and it was located around 8:55 a.m. ET.
CNN has also reported that OceanGate believes the five passengers “perished.” Their statement:
We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost. These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.
At about 12:00 p.m. Eastern, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that they found a “debris field” near the Titanic site.
The five passengers aboard the OceanGate submersible vessel are Hamish Harding, a British businessman, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and the CEO of OceanGate Stockton Rush. Their expedition down to the ocean floor to view the wreckage of the Titanic began on Sunday and was expected to resurface at around 6:00 p.m. Less than two hours after submerging, the sub lost contact with its support ship, the Polar Prince.
Search operations began the same day contact was lost, but there had been no sign of the sub. The trip down to the floor of the Atlantic where Titanic lay — about 12,500 below the surface — was expected to take about two hours. If this was the case, the sub could have made it down to the site when it lost contact.
The sub was equipped with an oxygen supply intended to last 96 hours, a number that was watched closely as the days passed without any sign of the vessel. There were few updates provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, which worked together with other branches of the U.S. military and Canadian counterparts for the search and rescue operation; France also lent a research ship. The search area was roughly two times the size of the surface area of Connecticut and 2.5 miles deep.
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