Officials Mull Possible Criminality Amid Titanic Submersible Investigation

Officials who are investigating the Titanic submersible will look into data and the voice recordings from its mothership.

They will try to find out what happened and whether any criminality occurred, reported New York Post.

On Saturday, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) visited the Polar Prince. It is the OceanGate Titan sub's lead ship. They visited the ship "to collect information from the vessel's voyage data recorder and other vessel systems that contain useful information," TSB Chairwoman Kathy Fox told CNN.

She said that the agency wants to "find out what happened." They also want to figure out what needs to change to "reduce the chance or the risk of such occurrences in the future."

She shared that the voice recordings "could be useful" in their investigation." But she noted that the probe's purpose was not to blame anyone.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Kent Osmond said on Saturday that authorities are working to figure out whether the case warrants a criminal investigation.

He said that such a probe will proceed only if their examination of the circumstances indicate "criminal, federal or provincial laws may possibly have been broken."

Early June 18, OceanGate Expeditions' Titan submersible was carrying five passengers -- Sulaiman Dawood, his business tycoon father, Shahzada, British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush and Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

It descended into the Atlantic Ocean to go to the Titanic wreckage that is 12,500 feet below.

The five passengers, who were aged between 19 and 77, were sealed into the sub by 17 bolts. It could only have been opened from the outside. When they left the water's surface, they were estimated to have had about 96 hours of oxygen reserves.

Experts estimated that when communications were lost, the sub had reached just shy of 10,000 feet below the surface. It was about an hour and 45 minutes into its expedition.

There were reports of recurring "underwater noises" that were characterized as "tapping" and "banging." but later they were deemed unrelated to the missing crew.

On Thursday, the US Coast Guard announced that it had found an array of debris on the ocean floor. It is about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. It indicated that the sub had suffered a "catastrophic implosion."

According to The Guardian, the US Navy had said that it had detected an "anomaly" likely to have been the implosion of the sub.

Film director James Cameron had also claimed that his deep-sea exploration sources detected a "loud bang" that could have been the moment when the passengers lost their lives.

The bodies of the five passengers are unlikely to be recovered.