The debris of the small submersible Titan was recovered and brought back to earth on Wednesday, June 28. The Titan had disappeared near the wreck of the Titanic with five people on board last week.
Canadian media showed pieces of what appeared to be the nose and parts of the submersible's hull being hoisted onto a Canadian Coast Guard vessel in St. John's, Newfoundland, eastern Canada.
'An extremely risky operation'
One of the officials of Pelagic Research Services, which had deployed its underwater robot (ROV) to scan the Atlantic floor, confirmed that it had completed its operations. "We finished our game at sea," their spokesman, Jeff Mahoney, told AFP. "This was an extremely risky operation, both for the ROV and for the team that worked 24 hours a day, virtually without sleeping for the duration of the operation," he continued, confirming that all teams were now returning to the United States.
Contacted by AFP, Canadian authorities declined to comment on the recovery of the debris from the submarine and the US Coast Guard was not immediately reachable. The Titan, about 6.5 meters long, had dived on June 18 to observe the wreck of the Titanic and was to resurface seven hours later but contact was lost less than two hours after its departure.
See alsoTragic end for the last dive of the submarine "Titan"
Its five passengers died in the "catastrophic implosion" of the craft. Several pieces of debris were found on the seabed some 500 meters from the remains of the Titanic and at a depth of nearly 4000,<> meters in the North Atlantic. Two investigations have been opened to determine the causes of its implosion: one by Canada and the other by the United States.