The submersible Titan, which was on a mission to explore the wreckage of Titanic on the Atlantic ocean, had a "catastrophic implosion" that killed all five men onboard, authorities said on Thursday.
Onboard the 21-foot-long vessel is renowned British adventurer Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, French diving expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet and OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush.
The search team's conclusion capped a five-day search operation near the world's most famous shipwreck over 1,450 km east and 643 km south of Newfoundland. The submersible lost contact with the mother ship, Polar Prince, on Sunday, one hour and 45 minutes into its two hour dive down to the Titanic wreck site at a depth of 3,800m.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger, who oversaw the search operations, told reporters on Thursday that a remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) discovered a debris field from the submersible Titan on Thursday morning on the seabed some 488 meters from the bow of the Titanic.
He added that the debris found on the sea floor, including tail cone and and two sections of the pressure hull, was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."
"The debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle," Mauger said. On the likelihood of recovering crew members of the Titan, Mauger added that he doesn’t "have an answer for prospects at this time," but they will continue the search. "This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor," he said Thursday.
"The remotely operated vehicles will remain on the scene and continue to gather information," Mauger said.
"It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the "incredibly complex" case of the Titan's failure," Mauger said, adding that the agency will eventually have more information about what went wrong and its assessment of the emergency response.
He also thanked the international and interagency search effort. He said teams had the appropriate gear and worked as quickly as possible.
US Navy detected 'acoustic signature'
There are reports that the US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday in the area where the submersible went diving. A senior Navy official said the information was immediately relayed to the on-scene commanders leading the search effort so as to use to narrow down the search area.
However, the sound of the implosion was determined to be "not definitive." The Wall Street Journal was the first to report about the acoustic signature picked up by the Navy.
The report added that the audio of the implosion was picked up by a network of sensors as part of an underwater Navy acoustic listening system. The Navy also helped analyze the audio signatures of banging and other acoustic data that were collected throughout the search efforts.