The US Coast Guard is investigating the cause of the undersea implosion of a tourist submersible that killed all five people aboard while diving to the century-old wreck of the Titanic, officials said on Sunday, according to Reuters.
The announcement came a day after Canada’s Transportation Safety Board said it was conducting its own investigation into the implosion of the Titan, which has raised questions about the unregulated nature of such expeditions.
“My primary goal is to prevent a similar occurrence by making the necessary recommendations to enhance the safety of the maritime domain worldwide,” Captain Jason Neubauer, the Coast Guard’s chief investigator, said at a press conference in Boston on Sunday.
The Coast Guard opened what it calls a marine board investigation on Friday, Neubauer said, and is working with the FBI to recover evidence, including a salvage operation at the debris site on the seabed about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck, about 2-1/2 miles below the surface.
The findings will be shared with the International Maritime Organization and other groups “to help improve the safety framework for submersible operations worldwide,” Neubauer said.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement on Thursday that all five people in the vessel, including CEO Stockton Rush, “have sadly been lost.”
The others on board were two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood British adventurer Hamish Harding and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The Titan launched last Sunday morning and was reported overdue that afternoon about 435 miles south of St. John”s, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the Titanic sank more than a century ago. By Thursday, when the oxygen supply was expected to run out, there was little hope of finding the crew alive.