Rescuers reached the site in less than 10 minutes to find just one main rotor blade and an oil slick on the water. The wreckage of the helicopter itself was located by sonar operators on the Estonian Maritime Administration vessel EVA-320, who indicated that the aircraft was intact at a depth of roughly . Two Estonian deep-sea divers following an earlier unmanned robotic vehicle reported that the bodies of the passengers were inside the craft. Thirteen bodies were retrieved, with one pilot missing. The recovery mission was hindered by rough weather conditions. The wreckage of the aircraft was lifted on 13 August 2005 and transported to Tallinn for investigation. The missing pilot was not found in the initial searches performed by the Estonian and Finnish authorities, but the body was finally located on 25 August and retrieved by volunteer divers some distance away from the accident site. The post mortem indicated that the victims died from drowning.