All five passengers on the missing submersible that has captured the world’s attention over the past week are believed to “have sadly been lost,” the tour company revealed on Thursday.
OceanGate Expeditions released a statement Thursday afternoon that the Titan submersible’s pilot and the tour company’s chief executive, Stockton Rush, along with passengers including British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, British billionaire businessman Hamish Harding, and Titanic specialist Paul-Henri Nargeolet have been killed.
“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,” OceanGate said in a statement.
“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.”
The company did not release specifics on what led to the “loss of life,” but Rear Adm. John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard revealed during a press conference Thursday afternoon that the debris found in the search area of the missing submersible was consistent with “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” presumably killing all five people on board.
Also see: Secret Navy listening system detected Titan’s implosion Sunday: report
“Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families,” said Mauger, who has been leading the search. “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard, I offer my deepest condolences to the families.”
The submersible Titan was launched from a hired Canadian research icebreaker, Polar Prince, on Sunday morning to visit the Titanic wreckage site located in a remote area of the North Atlantic. The diving vessel went missing that same morning and was unable to communicate with the surface roughly an hour and 45 minutes after it began its descent, the Coast Guard said. This has spurred a search-and-rescue operation in the ensuing days that amounted to a race against the clock, as the Titan’s estimated 96-hour oxygen supply was expected to run out early Thursday.
Plenty of questions remain, including how, why and when this implosion may have happened. Mauger said that it’s still “too early to tell,” as this is “an incredibly complex operating environment on the seafloor over two miles beneath the surface.” But a top-secret U.S. Navy listening system may have detected the implosion of the Titan shortly after its disappearance on Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Associated Press contributed.