Debris from the missing Titan sub has been found in the search site, a friend of the passengers says.
David Mearns told the BBC a “landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible” were seen.
A debris field was found on the seabed near the Titanic wreck, the US Coast Guard announced earlier.
The Coast Guard will hold a press conference at 15:00 local time (20:00bst) with more information.
Contact with the sub – which has five people on board – was lost on Sunday as it made a descent to the Titanic wreck.
The debris patch was found by an ROV from the Horizon Arctic, a Canadian commercial vessel that arrived last night near the Titanic wreckage site.
It was loaded with support equipment and was also carrying an Odysseus 6k ROV that can reach depths of 6,000m.
It can also be used to recover items from the bottom of the ocean.
The upcoming press conference will discuss the debris field that the Horizon Arctic’s ROV has found.
The man who co-founded OceanGate with missing submersible pilot Stockton Rush has told BBC News there may have been an “instantaneous implosion” of the craft.
Guillermo Söhnlein was being interviewed as news of the emergence of debris in the Atlantic came in.
He said he would not be surprised if there was something on the surface.
Söhnlein said: “I know that our protocol for lost comms is for the pilot to surface the sub. From the beginning, I always thought that’s probably what Stockton would have done.
“In which case it becomes very difficult to find the sub because the surface ship wouldn’t have known it was coming up and wouldn’t have known where to look.
“My biggest fear through this whole thing watching the operations unfold is that they’re floating around on the surface and they’re just very difficult to find.”
He said there was a possibility there had been a catastrophe.
“What I do know is regardless of the sub, when you’re operating at depth the pressure is so great on any sub that if there is a failure it would be an instantaneous implosion. If that’s what happened that’s what would have happened four days ago,” he said.
Söhnlein, who left OceanGate 10 years ago, said he would not have acted differently in the circumstances.
He said: “If anything, I think we need to go back and learn from what’s happening, find out what’s happened, take those lessons and carry them forward.”
By BBC
