Press personnel were urged by Edward Cassano to “recognize the seriousness of the events and respect the depth and range of emotions.”
According to Edward Cassano, CEO of Pelagic Research Services, the operation to recover the once-missing Titan submarine was “unprecedented.”
Cassano discussed the submersible’s recovery at a news conference in East Aurora, New York. The submersible went missing on Father’s Day and was later determined to have imploded during a disastrous journey to the Titanic debris. The Titanic specialist Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, the British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, the British Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19, and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, all perished as a result.
According to local Buffalo station WKBW, Cassano’s crew was still dealing with “a lot of emotions” and is “tired” on Friday while talking about the moments they discovered the wreckage.
“Shortly after setting foot on the ocean below, we came across the Titan submersible’s wreckage. Sadly, a rescue turned into recovery by 12 o’clock, according to Cassano, who added that he was sent to the scene as part of a potential rescue. Of course, we continue to photograph the scene.
The CEO went on to detail the Odysseus 6-K, an ocean bottom explorer and remotely controlled vehicle (ROV) that, according to the site, “operates from the ship through a tether” and has cameras, robotic arms, and sonar.
“It was unprecedented in a sense, our ability to arrive at the sea floor and then go to work and then we worked for another five or six days at 3,800 meters and then we began the recovery operation, which in and of themselves are quite challenging,” Cassano continued.
The Odysseus 6-K’s engineer, Eric Peterson, spoke about his thoughts on the Titan operation. “Every time it goes in, you know, there’s faith that, of course, it’s going to work, but even so, in the back of your mind, it’s like if it ever wasn’t going to — please don’t be right now. But it was a fantastic success,” he told WKBW.
Cassano requested of the media during his press conference that they “recognize the seriousness of the events and respect the depth and range of emotions, certainly, and most importantly, the family and friends with the Titan and all those in the response.”
Earlier this week, as was previously reported, the U.S. Coast Guard disclosed that sailors had discovered “presumed human remains” while scouring the sub’s wreckage. Officials stated that the “presumed” remains “were carefully recovered” from the debris and that a Coast Guard cutter will carry them to a port in the United States for additional examination and testing under the supervision of the Marine Board of Investigation.
According to a press release, MBI Chair Captain Jason Neubauer claimed that the evidence “will give investigators from several international jurisdictions with crucial insights into the cause of this tragedy.”
To guarantee that a similar tragedy does not recur, he continued, “there is still a significant amount of work to be done to understand the factors that contributed to the catastrophic loss of the Titan.”
Ten days after the sub lost touch with the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince, its wreckage was brought back to shore in St. Johns, Newfoundland, on Wednesday.
