Even after the confirmation that the debris found on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean belongs to the submersible that had been missing since Sunday, investigators decided to continue scouring the ocean floor in an attempt to establish a timeline for the incident and the circumstances of the Titan’s last fatal voyage.
Remotely operated vehicles will remain on site and continue to collect information from the seabed, said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger on Thursday. They will map the wreckage field of the vessel, which is over 2 miles deep in the North Atlantic Ocean.
What is a catastrophic implosion?
A subaqueous implosion, likely the reason for the disappearance of the submersible and the death of the five passengers, refers to the sudden internal collapse of the vessel. At those depths, there is tremendous pressure on the submersible, and the slightest structural defect can be disastrous, according to experts. At the depths of the Titanic wreck, the implosion would have occurred in a fraction of a millisecond. Former Navy officer Aileen Marty said that the implosion may have happened before anyone “inside realized there was a problem.”
And the remains? Will they be recovered?
When asked if any remains could be recovered, Mauger noted that the “environment is incredibly unforgiving,” adding: “I don’t have an answer for the prospects at this time.”
But doctors say that an implosion on the seabed would leave no recoverable remains.
“There would be virtually nothing,” said Dr. Aileen Marty, a disaster medicine specialist at Florida International University, to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “It is highly unlikely that they will find anything there of human tissue.”
Source: CNN