Wreckage and human remains, this is what remained of the submarine Titan – They are looking for the causes of the tragedy

Debris and possible human remains from the Titan submarine have been recovered and returned to shore, the US Coast Guard announced Wednesday night, nearly a week after the international search and rescue operation ended and the five people on board were presumed dead.

At a Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday, crews they unloaded what appeared to be the Titan’s 22-foot-long hull, disintegrated. Pictures from the Canadian press showed what appeared to be a piece of the side of the hull and other debris being unloaded by the Horizon Arctica vessel that had developed a remotely operated vehicle to search the ocean floor for the submarine.

The wreckage will be taken to a US port, where the Marine Research Council will do further analysis and testing. US doctors ‘will conduct formal analysis of possible human remains carefully recovered from debris at scene’the Coast Guard said in a statement.

In a statement, Pelagic Research Services, which led the deep-sea recovery effort, said it had “successfully completed operations,” marking the end of a mission and a return to base of operations. The company did not confirm that the wreckage belonged to the Titan, saying the investigation was ongoing, and referred questions to the US Coast Guard, according to the New York Times.

A crew “has been working around the clock for 10 days, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and is looking forward to completing the mission and returning to their loved ones,” Pelagic Research Services said in a statement.

J. Carl Hartsfield, an underwater vehicle designer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said the recovered debris could contain vital information about the what exactly happened on Titan. Mr. Hartsfield stated that researchers would look for three things: a point of failure of the hull, how pieces of carbon fiber and titanium were connected, the materials of the submarine, and whether electronic data can be recovered.

But it won’t be as simple as examining a black box, as plane or train crash investigators do. Mr Hartsfield said he thought it was “extremely unlikely” the submarine had a central data recorder for a disaster. But, he said, data is being recorded in various places – hard drives, sonar footage and possibly even cameras – that could help investigators begin to sketch out a story of what happened.

The US Coast Guard is leading the investigation into why the submarine was destroyed and has convened a naval board of inquiry, the highest level of investigation in the Coast Guard. The commission is working closely with other national and international agencies that responded to the incident, including authorities in Canada, the United Kingdom and France. There is no timetable for the investigation.