All five passengers of the Titan submersible are believed to have died in a catastrophic implosion while traveling underwater to explore the Titanic shipwreck nearly 2.5 miles below the ocean surface.
OceanGate, the company that owns the submersible, released a statement Thursday confirming the loss of life:
“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. These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew. This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission. We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families. This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea. We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time.”
The loss of life was also confirmed by the U.S. Coast Guard during a 3:00 p.m. press conference.
The sub initially lost contact with a surface vessel less than 1 hour and 40 minutes into the trip on Sunday. Search parties were deployed to the area in an effort to locate the missing sub. On Tuesday, a Canadian craft picked up sounds coming from the bottom of the ocean, however, ROVs were unable to locate anything. By Wednesday afternoon, the search area was twice the size of Connecticut and involved vessels from multiple agencies and countries.
During the search for the missing explorers experts had a theory that if the sub had not imploded due to the thousands of pounds of pressure, the crew had only 96 hours of oxygen available to them.
By Thursday a debris field that was located near the Titanic shipwreck had been confirmed as the missing submersible.
During the press conference, the coast guard reported the investigation into the wreck will continue and that they are hoping to provide the families with more answers.