Canada's Transportation Safety Board launches probe into fatal loss of submersible exploring Titanic

Canada's Transportation Safety Board is launching an investigation into the implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible and the Canadian-flagged ship that dropped the vessel in the ocean for its doomed journey to explore the Titanic wreckage.

Officials announced the investigation Friday but said they are still assessing whether the fatal event was an accident or not.

OceanGate chartered Polar Prince, a decommissioned Canadian Coast Guard vessel, to drop the Titan submersible last Sunday at the Titanic wreck site, which is located less than 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that the five crew and passengers on the submersible died when a "catastrophic loss of the chamber pressure" caused an "implosion."

A team of Canadian officials with the safety board plans on gathering information, conducting interviews and assessing what happened before analyzing the event to determine what safety deficiencies occurred. They will then issue a report on the matter.

Experts had expressed safety concerns for years to OceanGate about its Titanic mission. However, late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush defended the Titan vessel, which was unregulated and not registered with a country.

Rush was among the five people to die on the Titan submersible's final journey, along with pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding and Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.

The U.S. Navy reportedly detected what appeared to be an implosion in the area last Sunday where the Titan made its descent to the Titanic and lost contact with Polar Prince.

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.