All five people aboard the Titan submersible are believed to be dead, and debris discovered in the search area was consistent with a ‘catastrophic implosion,’ the U.S. Coast Guard said.
The debris was found off the bow of the sunken Titanic, officials said.
The search for the Titan, which went missing Sunday after it embarked on a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, had been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected ‘underwater noises‘ Tuesday and again yesterday.
U.S. Coast Guard officials had estimated the five passengers could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET today, and the location of the missing vessel had remained a mystery even as the search intensified.
What to know about the search for the Titan
The debris found at the seafloor was ‘consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,’ the Coast Guard said.
The Coast Guard said today that a ‘debris field’ had been found in the search area.
The submersible disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, which is 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
A sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the a senior U.S. Navy official said. The sound was not definitive, the official said.
- Those on board have been identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission; British billionaire Hamish Harding, the owner of Action Aviation; French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet ‘knew the risks that were possible with this expedition,’ stepson says
Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Navy veteran who died aboard the Titan, was ‘fearless’ and understood the potential danger of traveling to the Titanic’s wreckage, his stepson said in an interview.
‘Anyone who gets into those submersibles knows the risks that could happen,’ stepson John Paschall said, adding: ‘Going into this, he knew the risks that were possible with this expedition.’
Paschall described Nargeolet, who had led several expeditions to the sunken passenger ship and supervised the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, as ‘the world expert on the Titanic.’
The ocean, Paschall said, was Nargeolet’s ‘home away from home. He was just so comfortable out there and in any ocean and any lake or whatever it was. The water was just so connected to him.
‘And that especially goes for the Titanic,’ Paschall said.
‘He put so much of his life into that ship.’
Paschall also recalled Nargeolet as a ‘really incredible stepfather’ — someone who was respectful, loving and funny.
While Nargeolet knew the risks of traveling in a submersible, Paschall said, he wanted to know more about how the company that operated the boat, OceanGate, had maintained the vessel and whether it had kept passengers properly informed.
‘Were all the safety procedures followed as closely as possible?’ Paschall said. ‘Was everyone aware of everything that was going on? Was there anything that was missed during any kind of inspection?’
