The US Coast Guard released the first picture of the Titan submersible sitting at the ocean below after its devastating implosion last year on Monday, coinciding with the start of an inquiry hearing.
Following a worldwide search and rescue effort, all five individuals on board the ship perished in June of last year on its tragic final dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
The damaged tail cone of the submersible is visible on the murky blue North Atlantic Ocean floor in the image that was made public on Monday. A shredded piece of the vessel can be seen close by, and the tail cone was broken off from the remainder of the craft, its edges jagged.
In North Charleston, South Carolina, for the hearing that is scheduled to go until September 27, investigators reported that after searching for several days, they discovered the wreckage a few hundred yards from the Titanic’s location.
The Marine Board of Investigation stated in its opening statement that on June 22 of last year, a remotely operated vehicle found the tail cone and other debris, offering “conclusive evidence” that the submersible underwent a catastrophic implosion, or an abrupt inward collapse brought on by extreme pressure.
The adventurer Hamish Harding, the French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, and Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of the vessel’s operator, all perished in it.
The Marine Board of Investigation revealed on Monday that DNA testing and analysis allowed the recovered remains to be matched to the five men on board.
The first witnesses called by the board on Monday included former workers of OceanGate, the company that designed and ran the submersible. Six seconds before the submersible lost communication with the surface, the presenter also disclosed the submersible’s last message.
The Titan’s message to its mother ship stated, “Dropped two wts,” which stood for weights the submersible might release in the event that it needed to surface. The mother ship lost track of the Titan shortly after it was “pinged” for the final time.
In the days that followed, a global search and rescue effort took place in isolated waters a few hundred miles southeast of Canada’s Newfoundland.
According to prior statements from the Coast Guard, the hearing would cover “pre-accident historical events, regulatory compliance, crew member duties and qualifications, mechanical and structural systems, emergency response, and the submersible industry.”
While “uncovering the facts surrounding the incident” is the primary goal of the hearing, board head Jason Neubauer admitted on Monday that the committee also has the responsibility of detecting “misconduct or negligence by credential mariners.”
“And we would submit a recommendation to the Department of Justice if any criminal activity is found,” he stated.