Recovering the Titan 12,500 feet underwater was dangerous, complex, emotional: Recovery team

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Titan submersible had gone missing, they quickly learned that they would have to do what other deep-sea experts had already tried unsuccessfully: to find the lost sub in some of the most forbidding depths of the North Atlantic. They set to work deploying their own remotely operated vehicle, the Odysseus, from a ship with a giant «umbilical cord,» then lowered the behemoth to the ocean floor, a process that took about an hour and a half, Cassano said Friday at a news conference held at the suburban Buffalo headquarters of his company, Pelagic Research Services. Just moments after Odysseus arrived on the seafloor, its high-definition cameras sent back images of debris that were undoubtedly what remained of the Titan.

Their hopes for a rescue of the submersible's crew of five had faded. «I have to apologise,» Cassano said, his voice cracking as he described the moment the debris was found. He said he and his crew were still experiencing «a lot of emotion».

The Canadian ship Horizon Arctic brought Odysseus to the search area that had been established for the Titan, and the underwater robot was offloaded into the ocean on June 22. The ship returned to port Wednesday with mangled chunks of the submersible. Investigating the debris is a crucial part of a multiagency investigation into why the Titan imploded on its way to view wreckage of the Titanic, killing five.

The Coast Guard, which is leading the investigation, said it had retrieved what are likely human remains from the debris. «It's a very complex operation and fraught with danger,» Cassano said of the process to locate, then retrieve the debris. "… Sadly, our rescue turned into a recovery." He said when his team arrived at the site in the North Atlantic where the Titan