Coast Guard: Debris Field Found During Search for Titanic Sub

The search for the missing submersible vessel Titan, which has been missing since Sunday, has found a debris field in the search area according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

At about noon Eastern time, the U.S. Coast Guard Northeast District provided the following update:

A debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic. Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information.

There will be a press conference by the Coast Guard at 3:00 p.m. ET.

CNN’s Dana Bash spoke with Maximilian Cremer, director of the Ocean Technology Group at the University of Hawaii Marine Center, to see what this find could mean. Cremer noted that the Titanic wreckage itself is surrounded by its own debris field, but something must have set itself apart that gave the Coast Guard some concern:

[The tweet] could tell me that somebody saw something in that debris that they have, I guess on camera or on sonar, that lets them assume that it might not be from the Titanic, it might be from the stricken vessel. A debris field is never good if you had somebody sitting in it, but I’m sure they’re now going through a verification process to see if it’s actually associated with the stricken sub.

While it sounds like a dire development in the search for the OceanGate vessel and its five passengers, the mission is still being considered a “search and rescue” mission. The oxygen supply has been dwindling as the search has yielded almost no conclusive results, which has given some experts reason to manage their expectations accordingly.

The sub lost contact with its support ship less than two hours after beginning its expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic. On board are British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son, Suleman, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and CEO of OceanGate Stockton Rush.

Watch the clip above via CNN.