Investigators search the ship that carried the Titan submersible as authorities weigh a possible criminal investigation into the deadly implosion

• The ship that carried the Titan submersible before it descended arrived back in Canada on Saturday.
• Investigators boarded the Polar Prince and conducted interviews with those on board.

The Polar Prince, the Canadian research ship that lost contact with the Titan submersible on Sunday, was met by investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when it returned to Newfoundland on Saturday with flags at half mast, The New York Times reported.

According to the Times, family members of the five people on the Titan who were on board the ship — owned by the private company Miawpukek Horizon Maritime Services — were interviewed by the TSBC. At the same time, law enforcement began interviewing crew members and passengers as part of its probe into whether it should launch a formal criminal investigation into the incident.

Kathy Fox, the chair of the TSBC, announced that investigators had also collected information from the ship's voyage-data recorder, which documents information such as audio on the ship.

International bodies, including the TSBC and the US Coast Guard, are looking into the lack of safety precautions that OceanGate took when five people, including its CEO Stockton Rush, boarded the Titan submersible on Sunday for a trip to the Titanic shipwreck.

Officials said the submersible lost contact with the Polar Prince hours after it began its descent and most likely imploded, instantly killing the five men on board.

During a Saturday press conference, the RCMP Superintendent Kent Osmond said that "there's no suspicion of criminal activity per se" but added that law enforcement was not ruling it out.

Following the catastrophic failure, greater scrutiny was given by the media, dive experts, and investigators on the years of statements made by OceanGate disregarding certifications and regulations before last week's expedition.

And while Rush complained about the industry being "obscenely safe," the company previously faced a safety lawsuit from a former employee.

There were also stories of those who participated in previous dives raising safety concerns. A friend of Rush told the CEO after a 2019 dive in the Titan that he heard cracking noises he attributed to a "flaw/defect in one area," according to emails seen by CNN.

And on Friday, the YouTuber Jake Koehler, who was on the submersible days before its final voyage Sunday, shared footage of Rush discussing issues with the sub's control systems.

The OceanGate cofounder Guillermo Söhnlein defended the company's record and said that ocean dives always came with some risk. However, experts have disputed this and argued that the disaster was entirely preventable.

The RCMP and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.