The Coast Guard has announced a potentially major update in the case of the missing submersible: a debris field was found at the bottom of the ocean, near the site of the Titanic wreck.
Coast Guard wrote on Twitter that they are “evaluating the information.” It is not yet definitively clear if the debris are related to the OceanGate Titan, the submersible that has been missing for days with five people on board.
The Coast Guard also said they would be giving another press conference at 3:00 PM EST to discuss their findings.
According to Sky News, a friend of two of the men missing on board said the debris was part of the missing vehicle, claiming it was “a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible,” though there has been no official confirmation.
The update comes on a critical day in the search for the missing submersible: the vehicle’s oxygen supply is estimated to have run out this morning, assuming it was still intact and operating.
The submersible’s passengers have been identified as British businessman Hamish Harding, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Sulaiman.
The passengers paid $250,000 for what would have been an eight-day expedition to the wreck of the RMS Titanic. Concerns had previously been raised about the safety of the operation.
The submersible was declared missing after it stopped making communication and failed to resurface on schedule. The circumstances of its disappearance are still unclear. With only 96 hours of oxygen on board, an urgent search-and-rescue mission was put into action.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – JUNE 21: Capt. Jamie Frederick of the U.S. Coast Guard, joined by others from the U.S. Navy, Royal Navy and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, gives an update on the search efforts for five people aboard a missing submersible approximately 900 miles off Cape Cod, on June 21, 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts. The Coast Guard is racing to find a submersible with five passengers that went missing during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
