An expert has said it would be took risky to recover the bodies of the five men who are now presumed dead after the 'catastrophic implosion' of their submersible.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were on board the tiny submersible, called Titan.
The OceanGate submersible is believed to have imploded on a journey to the wreckage of the Titanic, leaving all five men aboard dead and now, attention turns towards determining exactly what happened.
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An investigation will be launched, including studying the pieces of debris rescue attempts were able to recover from the search site, to work out the truth.
While pieces of the submersible have been recovered the chance of retrieving the bodies of the deceased is nowhere near as likely.
According to Insider, remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) expert Dr Brendan Englot has said it's too risky to go down and look for their bodies.
He said it would be 'prohibitive in cost' to launch a recovery operation at such a depth as to successfully recover any bodies.
Dr Englot argued that any remaining bodies of the five who died in the OceanGate sub would be too far down to recover and trying to do so would put more people at risk.
He said: "This would pose additional risk to the ROVs, as well as to the ships and crews operating them."
We don't wish to sugarcoat this, it's entirely possible that there are no bodies to be recovered due to the 'catastrophic implosion' and the effects it can have on the human body as there may essentially be nothing left to recover.
The only mercy is that it would have all been over in a millisecond as biomedical engineer Rachel Lance explained that they 'never stood a chance'.
Simulations of the 'catastrophic implosion' believed to have destroyed the Titan submersible indicate that it would have been 'incredibly quick'.
The US coast guard have also said that the likelihood of recovering any bodies is slim as efforts to recover debris for the investigation is ongoing but getting a recovery team down to the ocean floor to search for bodies would be so difficult.
ROVs are still searching the area for evidence which will flesh out the facts on what really happened to the sub.
Pieces of debris will be studied under a microscope in search of damage which might indicate which part of the sub gave way to the pressure.
This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Admiral John Mauger, the man in charge of the search operation, said.
"We will continue to work and we will continue to search down there but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time."
Topics: Titanic, US News, World News
Joe Harker