The head of the company that discovered the lost OceanGate Titan submarine near the wreckage of the Titanic last week got emotional at a news conference Friday when he described the moment his team realized all five crew members were dead.
“We were always aware of the Titan’s crew,” Ed Cassano, CEO of Pelagic Research Services, whose remote-controlled vehicle (ROV) found the missing submarine on June 22, told reporters on the search at a news conference in East -Aurora, New York, Friday. “Basically, we were focused on rescue.”
Cassano said his company immediately joined the search after being approached by OceanGate on June 18 when the Titan submarine lost contact with its mother ship less than two hours after it began to descend the Atlantic toward the wreckage of the ship. Titanic from 1912.
Cassano said Pelagic’s ROV Odysseus reached the ocean floor within 90 minutes of deployment and soon found the submarine’s debris field.
TITAN SUB DEBRIS SEEN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE CATASTROPHE
Ed Cassano, CEO of Pelagic Research Services, got emotional Friday at a news conference about finding the doomed submarine. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson/Paul Daly/The Canadian Press via AP)
“By 12 a.m., unfortunately, a rescue turned into a recovery,” Cassano tearfully told reporters. “We have to apologize. We are still demobilizing. Lots of emotions. People are tired.”
All five people aboard the submarine – OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, billionaire Hamish Harding, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman – died on June 18 when it suffered a “catastrophic” implosion, officials said after debris was found on June 22.
JAMES CAMERON SAYS HE WISHED HE WOULD HAVE TALKED ABOUT THE DESIGN OF OCEANGATE’S TITAN SUB
Inset, from left: Suleman Dawood, Shahzada Dawood, Stockton Rush; Paul-Henry Nargeolet and Hamish Harding were aboard the submarine OceanGate Titan. (Engro Corp. | Reuters/Shannon Stapleton | @OceanGateExped/Twitter | Felix Kunze/Blue Origin via AP | Ocean Gate/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The wreckage of the submarine was surfaced on Wednesday, and the US Coast Guard said “suspected human remains” had been found.
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Debris from the submarine Titan, salvaged from the ocean floor near the wreckage of the Titanic, is unloaded Wednesday from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John’s, Newfoundland. (Paul Daly/The Canadian Press via AP)
Cassano told a reporter that their company was aware of what OceanGate had done prior to the search. “It’s a very small community,” he said.
Pelagic Research Services’ Odysseus 6k ROV can be seen in a file image. The ROV found a “debris field” in the search area for the missing submarine OceanGate Titan near the Titanic in the North Atlantic. (Pelagic Research Services)
He said he had no opinion on their experiential approach — which included asking passengers to pay to ride the submarine while OceanGate funded their research — but he understood the company’s “passion and joy to explore.”
Titan sub-search team leader chokes while telling effort, realizing when rescue had ‘turned into a recovery’
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