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

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. Asked what he thought of the Titan’s voyage, Cassano said that, based on his own experience with a company that focuses on deep-sea research, he believes the crew was motivated by “a passion and a joy for exploration.” Pelagic has locations outside Buffalo and in Massachusetts. Its primary use is deep-sea science, but Pelagic Research “always knew that we’d be called at some point, and so we prepared the system for” rescue and recovery, Cassano said. Even after years of ROV use in science and industry, removing items from the ocean floor remains painstaking and difficult, said Andy Bowen, a principal engineer at Woods Hole who specializes in remotely operated submersibles.