Debris from the doomed Titanic tourist submarine was seen for the first time since the "catastrophic" implosion that destroyed it and killed all five on board.
US Coast Guard officials were seen moving recovered pieces from OceanGate's Titan submersible ashore that had been recovered from the sea bed, the Mirror reports.
Pictures showed the major pieces of debris being unloaded from the US Coast Guard ship Sycamore and Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John's, Newfoundland.
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The Titan submersible went missing earlier this month, prompting a major search before debris from the vessel was eventually recovered near the wreck of the Titanic.
A debris field was found by the Coast Guard last week around 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.
All five people onboard the submersible were killed after it suddenly lost contact with its surface ship. Their families now have the chance to see the clear damage that was caused.
One of the five killed was Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, the company that owned the vessel.
The four other victims consisted of three British citizens including billionaire Hamish Harding. Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood were also onboard along with French national and renowned diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
In the wake of the horror incident, US maritime officials said they will issue a report aimed at improving the safety of submersibles worldwide.
Authorities are still trying to sort out what agency or agencies are responsible for determining the cause of the tragedy, which happened in international waters.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the U.S. but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. Meanwhile, the Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada, and those killed were from England, Pakistan, France, and the US.
Investigators from the US, Canada, France and the United Kingdom are working closely together on the probe of the June 18 accident, which happened in an “unforgiving and difficult-to-access region" of the North Atlantic, said US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the Coast Guard First District.
The big clues for investigators are five "major pieces" of debris.
Undersea expert Paul Hankin said: “We found five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan.
“The initial thing we found was the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hull. We then found a large debris field, within that debris field we found the front-end bell of the pressure hull.
“Shortly thereafter we found a second smaller debris field. Within that debris field we found the other end of the pressure hull. We continue to map out the debris field, and as the admiral said, we will do the best we can to fully map out what’s down there.”
"That was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event.
The USCG previously confirmed that debris found at the wreck of the Titan showed signs that a devastating loss of pressure occurred in the submersible.
In a press conference after the debris field was found, Rear Admiral John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District, did not confirm when the vehicle became irreparably damaged but said the sonar buoys deployed by teams would have picked up an implosion.
“This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel which would have generated a significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up,” he said.
He added: "The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."
Officials confirmed that Titan's debris field was found only 1,600 feet from the bow of Titanic.
Carl Hartsville of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said the location wreckage was found was "consistent with the last location of communication for an implosion in the water column."
Hartsville, who believes all of the debris has been found, continued: "The size of the debris field is consistent with that implosion in the after column." He added the area was a place where "there is not any debris of Titanic."
The debris was located by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) named 'Odysseus' on Thursday last week.
The search took place in a complex ocean environment where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador Current, an area where challenging and hard-to-predict ocean currents can make controlling an underwater vehicle more difficult, said Donald Murphy, an oceanographer who served as chief scientist of the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol.
Hartsfield, however, has since said he doesn't expect currents to be a problem, based on the data he's reviewed and the performance of the remote vehicles so far.
