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It is more than a month since the U.S. Coast Guard revealed that it had found "presumed human remains" among the debris recovered from the Titan submersible.

The search and rescue agency is leading a multinational investigation into the sub's implosion, which took place during a trip in June to view the wreck of the Titanic. Its five passengers—Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman—are all presumed dead.

The Coast Guard has declined to comment on when its analysis of the remains will be released to the passengers' families and the public. But a forensic medical expert has told Newsweek that an inspection of bodies found underwater can be completed in a matter of hours, while the time-consuming task is to locate and retrieve them in the first place.

The Coast Guard said on June 28 that the evidence it had gathered had been sent to St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada, and would then be taken to a U.S. port for "further analysis and testing."

American medical professionals would "conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered within the wreckage at the site of the incident," the agency added.

"Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation and out of respect for the families and friends of those involved in this tragedy, we will not provide specifics about evidence recovered," a Coast Guard spokesperson told Newsweek.

The investigation aims to find out whether "an act of misconduct, incompetence, negligence, unskillfulness, or willful violation of law" contributed to the passengers' deaths.

Soon after the Titan was reported missing on June 18, questions were raised about the safety of the deep sea exploration vehicle, which was not certified, had an unconventional design, and was constructed out of some off-the-shelf parts.

OceanGate, the company that owned the submersible and whose CEO Rush was onboard, has said it will not comment publicly during the investigation.

Forensic medical examiner on how bodies are recovered from ocean

Dr. Pierre Perich, a forensic medical examiner at a hospital in the French city of Marseilles, told Newsweek about two of his cases where, in 2009, bodies were recovered from planes that had crashed into the ocean. He explained that "several phases of research and a heavy technical investment" had been required to retrieve the passengers' bodies.

"In itself, the time taken to examine a body, including samples for analysis, rarely exceeds two hours," Perich said. "The problem is essentially finding the bodies and bringing them to the surface of the water, where they must be frozen as soon as possible because their degradation is then very rapid."

In both 2009 cases—an Air France crash in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil and a Yemenia Airlines crash in the Indian Ocean—Perich said several months passed between the bodies being discovered and then being returned to the families.

The passengers' bodies were trapped in the crashed aeroplanes on the ocean floor and had to be brought up from around 13,000 feet by deep-sea robots. It took the robots a minimum of three hours to make trips to that depth—the Titanic sits at a similar depth in the Atlantic Ocean. The robots then had to navigate the wrecks to retrieve the bodies.

In the Yemenia case, Perich said it took the team about 10 days to complete autopsies.

What happened to Titan on June 18?

The Titan sub was around an hour and 45 minutes into its descent when it stopped responding to its support vessel. The trip had begun at 8 a.m. ET on June 18.

An operation was launched to locate the vessel before the onboard oxygen ran out. But on June 22, deep-sea robots scouring the sea floor around the Titanic found a field of debris.

"The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy," said Coast Guard Captain Jason Neubauer, who is leading the Marine Board of Investigation.

"There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again."

Marine safety agencies from Canada, the U.K. and France are also taking part in the inquiry.

What happens to bodies in ocean water?

Officials have previously expressed skepticism about the prospect of recovering identifiable human remains. Shortly after the debris field was discovered, Coast Guard Admiral John Mauger told reporters that the seafloor near the Titanic was "an incredibly unforgiving environment." At 12,500 feet below the surface, where the ship sits, the water pressure is about 400 times what would be experienced at sea level.

The factors affecting bodies in the sea "are still largely not understood" because research in the area "has been scarce," according to a 2017 study in the journal Forensic Science International co-written by Perich. However, the depth, salinity and oxygen level of the water are known to affect decomposition.

The paper explains that decomposition in water "generally progresses slower than on land" due to the cooler temperature and the lack of feeding insects, and works "at an even further decelerated rate" in salt water.

Perich told Newsweek bodies he had seen that had been brought up from 400 bars of pressure "presented an exceptional state of preservation." This was "due to the absence of oxygen, light and current at this depth and a temperature of the order of 2 to 3 degrees [Celsius, or 35-37F], allowing good preservation of the corpses."

However, studies suggest some scavengers can be found in the deep sea. Researchers at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, wrote in 2009 that remains at a depth of 300 meters, about 985 feet, "immediately attracted lysianassid amphipods," a type of small crustacean that could "completely skeletonize the remains within 4 days." Amphipods can also be found at much greater depths.

The 2017 study states that remains in enclosed environments are harder for sea scavengers to access. Such remains can form adipocere, a waxy substance formed by the interaction of fat in soft tissue with water, that inhibits skeletonization.

Adipocere tended to occur "during a prolonged stay in the water," according to Perich, and the damage he had seen was largely from "predatory action of underwater fauna."

The idea that the bodies of the Titan passengers might have been "pulverized, or reduced to nothing, as has been mentioned by certain 'experts' without experience," was incorrect, he said. This is because "the human body is essentially composed of water, which is an incompressible liquid."

Their deaths would have been "almost instantaneous," he added. The likely cause was "major barotrauma"—a sudden increase in pressure—as well as possibly drowning and mechanical trauma.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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