The company that owns the missing submarine said Thursday that the passengers “unfortunately went missing” hours after authorities announced they had found the wreckage.

Authorities said the bodies of the five passengers had not yet been recovered. Billionaire British explorer Hamish Harding; French oceanographer and Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Narjolet; Oceangate CEO and pilot Stockton Rush; Pakistani businessman Shazada Dawood and their 19-year-old son Sleman, both British citizens, have not been investigated. That’s because Oceangate officially said in a statement that it believed the passenger had “sadly gone missing.”

In a new statement, Oceangate said it believed the passengers on the Titanic submersible were “sadly missing”.

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 22, 2023

The U.S. Coast Guard announced on the same day that “a rubble area was found within an ROV search area near the Titanic.”

The Titan submarine sailed off St. John’s, Newfoundland on Sunday, but lost contact with its mothership less than two hours after it began its descent to search for the wreckage of the Titanic. Experts estimated that the submarine was equipped with 96 hours of emergency oxygen on departure and would be out of oxygen by Thursday.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, a Canadian spy plane detected a sound in the water, according to NPR, described by some as a “bang”. report.

Questions have been raised about the Titan’s safety in recent days, resurfacing Rush’s comments about “very safe” regulations for 2019. Rush argued that the strict rules hinder innovation within the commercial subindustry. Bert Kemper, a member of the Marine Technology Association, said Rush likely could have avoided some restrictions by deploying submarines in high seas, where US law does not apply. insider.

This is preliminary and will be updated as information becomes available.