By Ismail Shakil
OTTAWA (Reuters) – A Canadian-flagged ship on Wednesday brought ashore debris from the Titan submersible that imploded while on a voyage to the century-old wreck of the Titanic earlier this month, killing all five people on board.
Video from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation showed what appeared to be the nose of the submersible and other shattered fragments wrapped in white tarp pulled up by a crane off the Horizon Arctic vessel at the St. John’s harbor in Newfoundland on Wednesday morning.
The debris is expected to shed more light on the cause of the catastrophic implosion that killed everyone on board – OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush; British billionaire Hamish Harding; Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman; and French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
It was not immediately clear where the debris was headed.
Canadian and U.S. authorities have in the past week announced investigations into the incident, which has raised questions about the unregulated nature of such expeditions.
The deep-sea submersible operated by OceanGate Expeditions was discovered in pieces on the seabed some 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the bow of the Titanic by a robotic diving vehicle last week, ending a multinational five-day search for survivors.
“Our team has successfully completed off-shore operations, but is still on mission and will be in the process of demobilization from the Horizon Arctic this morning,” Pelagic Research, which operates the robotic vehicle, said in a statement. It declined to comment further, citing confidentiality reasons.
Footage also showed a shattered part of the hull and machinery with dangling wires being taken off the ship at St. John’s, where the expedition to the Titanic had set off from.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa, editing by Deepa Babington)
