Evidence presumed to be human remains from the site of the imploded Titan submersible has been recovered, the U.S. Coast Guard said late Wednesday.
The suspected remains were discovered “within the wreckage” of the submersible, and will be transported back to the United States for formal analysis and testing.
“I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,” Captain Jason Neubauer, the chair of the Marine Board of Investigation, said in a Coast Guard news release.
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“The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,” he continued, cautioning, “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.”
Parts of the wreckage salvaged from the debris field on the seafloor were returned to land on Wednesday morning. Workers were spotted on a Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John’s, Newfoundland unloading mangled pieces of the submersible. The debris was offloaded from the Horizon Arctic, a Canadian ship that has in previous years been chartered as a supply vessel by OceanGate Expeditions, the company that arranged the ill-fated voyage.
Last Thursday, it was a remotely operated vehicle deployed from the Horizon Arctic that first located the Titan’s debris field. The wreckage, including the tail cone, was found roughly 12,500 feet below the surface and just 1,600 feet from the Titanic.
Shortly after, authorities confirmed the submersible had suffered a “catastrophic” implosion while on a dive to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five men on board.
Pelagic Research Services, the company that owns the remotely operated vehicles that retrieved the remains of the 22-foot, 23,000-pound Titan, said that it had “successfully completed offshore operations.” In a Wednesday morning statement, a spokesperson added that the company was “in the process of demobilization from the Horizon Arctic.”
Pelagic’s team has “been working around the clock now for ten days, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and are anxious to finish the mission and return to their loved ones,” according to the statement.
The spokesperson said that they could not comment on the ongoing investigation into the disaster, but that officials would hold a news conference at Pelagic’s New York State base of operations once “our team has regrouped.”
