East Aurora, N.Y. (WBEN) - "We're still demobilizing. There's a lot of emotions, and people are tired."
Members of Pelagic Research Services (PRS), the firm assisting in the recovery of the Titan submersible at the site of the RMS Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean, have returned to their East Aurora base and provided a briefing on Friday of their role during the mission.
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It was eight days ago when PRS' subsea asset, ROV Odysseus 6K, was able to discover the debris field of the Titan submersible on the ocean floor not too far from the wreckage of the Titanic. According to PRS CEO, Ed Cassano, when their crew arrived on site, they became the primary identified asset to effective rescue.
"There was a fleet of ships there. We came in next to a ship called Deep Energy, an industry ship. Their vehicle was at 2,700 meters, they were not capable of going deeper," said Cassano during Friday's briefing. "I want to point out that Deep Energy has two ROVs. Prior to our arrival on site, they had sent one ROV to sea floor beyond their depth capability, and it, unfortunately, mechanically had an issue. That is just the scope of the effort. They lost a vehicle trying to get to sea floor. When we arrived on site, we were slotted as primary.
"We came right next to Deep Energy, we're in a 400-foot ship, and Deep Energy was a 700-foot ship, and we're 75 meters apart. They had a lifting line at 3,000 meters waiting to recover. Our focus, our plan was to integrate the lifting mechanism into the center core, and the lifting capabilities of Odysseus 6k. Our plan of rescue was to, immediately upon finding Titan, latch onto her as quickly as possible and begin recovery."
However, when crews did discover the wreck of the Titan, that triggered a different sets of protocols going forward.
"During this period, upon arriving on site, we have to point out that the U.S. Coast Guard Incident Command reached out to the families of the Titan crew upon our discovery of the debris, a very important communication," Cassano said. "We continued then, of course, to perform an operation from rescue to recovery. From basically June 22 till June 27 at 9:30 [a.m.], our teams - I say our teams, because it was the integrated team of the Horizon Arctic, the Pelagic team and many many, many others - were conducting 24-hour ROV operations as directed by the onsite commander. We of course, used our heavy lift capability to recover all the objects of interest, as directed by the Incident Response Team."
During Friday's press briefing, Cassano was able to provide a detailed timeline of PRS' role in recovery of the Titan, starting the day contact had been lost with the submersible on Sunday, June 18. He says OceanGate got in contact with PRS later in the afternoon that Sunday, and Cassano then quickly went to work assembling his team.
"I landed at JFK airport at around 11 [p.m.] and was in conversation with their director of operations immediately, assessed the situation, and we were asked to activate our deep water remotely-operated vehicle system, Odysseus 6k. We immediately began assembling a team, sending some to St. John's immediately, and sending others here to East Aurora," Cassano detailed.
"On June 19, which is Monday, PRS began packing and mobilizing the Odysseus 6k ROV. Throughout the day, PRS staff arrived on site, and by late afternoon PRS was at Buffalo-Niagara International Airport and mobilized for deployment, where to U.S. Air Force C-17s were waiting for us. With the equipment staged at the airport, PRS awaited arrival of, yet, another C-17 with additional equipment required to not only load our kit at Buffalo, but to offload it at St. John's, Newfoundland International Airport."
It was then on Tuesday, June 20, when PRS began loading the three C-17s at the airport, and then departed for St. John's, Newfoundland, arriving in the early afternoon. Cassano commends the immediate and focused offloading and mobilization process from the C-17s to the Horizon Arctic, as awaiting them was a ship and a team, and a community ready to engage to get crews onto the ship and underway the next morning at 5:30 a.m.
Cassano says the integration and activation of the ROV Odysseus 6k was finished on the way to the site, and crews arrived to the believed location of the Titan in less than 24 hours.
"At that point, within an hour, 05:30 [a.m. on Thursday, June 22], our system was launched from the back deck and began to descend to the sea floor," Cassano said. "Shortly after arriving on the sea floor, we discovered the debris of the Titan submersible. Of course, we continued to document the site, and by 12 o'clock, sadly, a rescue turned into a recovery."
Cassano says it took the Odysseus 6k about an hour-and-a-half to reach the sea floor, where it was "shortly after" they discovered the debris of the submersible.
It was on Wednesday, June 28 when Horizon Arctic arrived back at the Canadian Coast Guard base with the Pelagic embark team, where wreckage of the Titan was offloaded and demobilization began.
Just 24 hours before Friday's briefing, Pelagic's embark team was still on site in Newfoundland completing the final demobilization efforts. Cassano says the Odysseus 6k is expected return to East Aurora on Monday.
PRS continues to review the sequence of events they were a part of, while the U.S. Coast Guard continues to investigate the incident with the Titan submersible.
You can listen to the entirety of Friday's briefing available in the player below: