Remains of Titanic Sub Crew May Never be Recovered as Coastguard Prepares to End Search

The hunt for further pieces of evidence into the final moments of the Titan submersible near the wreck of the Titanic will continue, but it seems doubtful the mortal remains of those onboard will be able to be recovered.

After days of searching and a frantic race to find any evidence of the lost submersible Titan before the 96 hours of presumed oxygen reserves onboard expired on Thursday morning, pieces of wreckage were discovered by by underwater robots engaged in the rescue effort. The discovery of pieces of the sub confirmed it had been lost in a catastrophic hull failure, but at least strongly implied those onboard had not suffered long.

While the search will continue a little longer to recover more evidence, the U.S. Coastguard said, it appears unlikely the mortal remains of the five onboard, who were the CEO of submarine owner OceanGate, a veteran French Navy diver, a British billionaire, and the heir to a major Pakistani industrial family and his son, will be brought up for burial.

U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral John Mauger said it wasn’t clear whether the bodies could even be found amid the vast darkness of the deep, and the muddy seafloor. He remarked in response to a question on that: “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment out there on the sea floor. The debris is consistent with the catastrophic implosion of the vessel. We will continue to work and search the area down there but I don’t have an answer on prospects at this time.”

Sky News reports the remarks of subject expert Captain John Noble, who said recovering the remains of those onboard would be expensive and that cost would have to be “met from some quarters”. Rather, he suggested it might be more realistic the Titan five could be left “in peace… in a resting place along with hundreds of Titanic passengers”.

“The decision may well be to leave them in peace where they are”, he said.

The Titan lost contact with the surface approximately an hour and three-quarters into its dive to the remains of the RMS Titanic on Sunday. After it failed to resurface later that day, its operator raised the alarm with the coastguard and a search was launched that would ultimately involve over a dozen ships, aircraft, and remote control diving robots.

It was reported that banging noises had been detected in the water during the search, but these later were revealed to have been misinterpreted ocean background noise.