After hours of global anxiety, OceanGate announced Thursday that they believed the five passengers who went missing while attempting to explore the Titanic shipwreck “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,” read the statement. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.”
The grim announcement came four days after a 21-foot tourist submersible named the Titan was reported missing approximately 900 miles east of Cape Cod, triggering a massive search to find the vessel before the occupants ran out of oxygen.
Earlier Thursday, the Coast Guard said that a debris field was discovered by a remotely operated vehicle near the Titanic, and that officials were in the process of “evaluating the information.” They later confirmed that the debris was from the exterior of the submersible craft.
The Titan had been projected to run out of its 96-hour supply of breathable air on Thursday morning. And because the door was bolted from the outside, those inside would not have been able to open it on their own even if they were able to reach the surface.
The Titan, operated by OceanGate, a private exploration company based in Everett, Wash., launched early Sunday morning to tour Titanic wreckage with five passengers on board: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush; a 61-year-old British billionaire and explorer; Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old Pakistani businessman; Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a 77-year-old French explorer.
The Polar Prince, a Canadian research vessel, lost contact with the submersible about an hour and 45 minutes after launch. OceanGate reported The Titan missing on Sunday evening, triggering a massive international search effort led by the U.S. Coast Guard and assisted by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Air National Guard, Royal Canadian Navy and Canadian Coast Guard.
A Canadian P-3 aircraft equipped with sonar listening equipment detected underwater “banging noises” on Tuesday and Wednesday, raising hopes that the Titan crew might be found alive. But Coast Guard officials cautioned that they were not sure what caused the noises even while remaining adamant that the search remain in its rescue phase.
“This is a search-and-rescue mission, 100 percent,” Frederick said Wednesday. “We are smack dab in the middle of search and rescue, and we’ll continue to put every available asset that we have in an effort to find the Titan and the crew members.”
The shift to from search and rescue to search and recovery means the operation is now focused on recovering as much of the vessel and the remnants of its five passengers.
It also allows search crews to focus on locating and retrieving the vessel safely, not risking the lives of those scouring an area twice the size of Connecticut in waters about 2 and a half miles deep.
