OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File)
The debris that was found by a remote-operated vehicle near the Titanic wreck site was from the missing Titan sub, and its passengers are now believed to be dead, according to a report Thursday from CNN.
OceanGate released a statement saying they believe the passengers onboard the Titanic expedition submersible have "sadly been lost," the statement read, per CNN.
US Coast Guard officials said in a press conference on Thursday that the debris is "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."
The update comes shortly after David Mearn, a diving expert and friend of two passengers who were aboard the Titan, told Sky News that he received a Whatsapp message from the president of the Explorers Club that the debris was from the submersible that had been missing since Sunday.
Mearns said his "fear" on Monday morning when he learned his friends were missing was that the sub had imploded. He added that his "worst fears have now been realized" and that "two friends of mine are gone."
The submersible, a 21-foot-long titanium vessel, carried five passengers and was set to explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic located nearly 13,000 feet underwater, hundreds of miles off the coast of Cape Cod.
But an hour and 45 minutes into the expedition, the Titan lost communications with its mothership at the surface, US Coast Guard officials said Monday afternoon.
An urgent international search operation was launched and continued through Thursday as rescuers were fighting against the clock.
Assuming the vessel was still intact, US Coast Guard officials estimated that the sub had 96 hours of breathable oxygen when it first left for its destination, giving the search team until Thursday morning before the passengers run out of air. However, rates of oxygen consumption can vary, Mike Tipton, head of the extreme environments laboratory at Portsmouth University, UK, told Insider.
On Wednesday, searchers detected a banging sound from the area where the submersible went missing, raising a specter of hope that the vessel may still be intact and the passengers are still alive.
To find the sub, a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) capable of diving up to 20,000 feet underwater was deployed Thursday morning.
The five Titan passengers included British billionaire Hamish Harding; Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman; Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French navy captain and veteran deep sea diver; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
