A “debris field” has been found near the wreck of the Titanic for a missing submersible with five people on board.
Gatekeepers News reports that according to rescuers, this was found by an underwater robot searching near the wreck of Titan Sub on Thursday.
This came after rescuers insisted that the multinational mission to locate the craft was still focused on finding the crew alive despite fears that the vessel’s oxygen may have run out.
The US Coast Guard said in a tweet, “Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information.”
According to the coast guard, the debris field was found “within the search area by an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) near the Titanic.”
Officials added that the large debris field containing five major pieces of the vessel was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
Two more robots were deployed on Thursday in the hunt for the Titan sub, lost somewhere in a vast swathe of the North Atlantic between the ocean’s surface and more than two miles (nearly four kilometers) below.
Meanwhile, based on the sub’s capacity to hold up to 96 hours of emergency air, rescuers had estimated that the passengers, which include fee-paying tourists, may have run out of oxygen in the early hours of Thursday.
US Coast Guard officials said, five crew members aboard the submersible Titan were probably killed instantly in a “catastrophic implosion” as it descended to the wreck of the Titanic two miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Those aboard the submersible include British adventurer Hamish Harding, 58; French veteran Titanic explorer Paul Henri Nargeoloet, 77; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman; and 61-year-old American Stockton Rush, co-founder of OceanGate, the company that operated the lost sub.
Although officials could not confirm whether they will be able to recover the bodies of the crew members, the US Coast Guard said it will continue to investigate the site of the debris field, while vessels and personnel will be demobilised over the next 24 hours.
