All five people aboard the submersible, known as the “Titan,” were killed, the US Coast Guard said on a Thursday news conference.
U.S. Coast Guard officials said the debris found indicates the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion. Catastrophic implosion is a sudden inward collapse of a vessel due to intense internal pressure.
The CEO of the submersible company, a British billionaire explorer, a French diver and a father and son were on board. The five had gone to explore the wreck of titanic ship that sunk in 1912 in the North of Atlantic ocena killing over 1500 passengers on board.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” the Ocean Gate company said in a statement.
A remote operating vehicle operating on the seafloor near the wreck of the Titanic identified debris that were confirmed to be the remains of the Titan submersible .The site of the fatal accident is believed to be 1,600ft (487m) off the bow of the Titanic wreck.
Five major pieces were discovered amid the debris around the Titanic site. Among them, a nose cone, outside the pressure hull, and a larger debris field.
Earlier this week, there were moments that offered hope to the family and friends of the missing vessel.
Banging noises were detected underwater by sonar Tuesday and Wednesday in the massive search area, though their origin was unclear. The sounds on Tuesday first came every 30 minutes and were heard again four hours later, according to an internal US government memo update on the search.
When asked about those noises Thursday, Rear Admiral John Mauger, who was ;eading the search for the titan said, “There doesn’t appear to be any connection between the noises and the location on the seafloor.”
The US Navy also helped analyze the audio signatures of banging and other acoustic data that were heard throughout the search efforts, the Navy official said. Those were likely some form of natural life or sounds given off by other ships and vessels that were part of the search effort, the official said.