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

 The operators of the underwater robot that located the missing submersible Titan quickly learned that it was up to them to find the vessel after other deep-sea experts had tried unsuccessfully

Debris from the Titan submersible, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, is unloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John's, Newfoundland on...Show more

EAST AURORA, N.Y. -- When Edward Cassano and his colleagues arrived in the remote stretch of ocean where the 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 apologize,” 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.