Divers found one of the flight data recorders of Swissair Flight 111 yesterday and were preparing to fly it to a laboratory in Ottawa for analysis.
The recorder could provide clues into the cause of the crash that killed all 229 people aboard the Swiss aircraft off the Canadian coast last Wednesday.
Canadian navy and coast guard ships, as well as police and military divers, continued trying to track down tantalising signals and sonar readings that might lead them to the MD-11's fuselage. The diving operation was slowed by poor visibility at lower depths and six-foot swells on the surface.
Those not involved in the salvage effort have been barred from the entire search area. Soldiers searched the shoreline for debris and human remains. Identifying the victims was expected to take weeks.
In a makeshift morgue at a military base near Halifax, six teams of experts - pathologists, dentists, radiologists and toxicologists - studied the human remains contained in about 60 body bags.
Late on Saturday, the coroner, Mr John Butt, said the first positive identification of human remains was made. The victim was a French female passenger, he said, without giving her name.
However this identification was "an exception," he said, because the woman was able to be identified visually. It was unlikely to be repeated because the impact of the crash resulted in severed body parts strewn over the search area.
Victims' families and residents were still trying to come to grips with the tragedy. More than 300 family members have flown to Halifax, Nova Scotia, from New York, the plane's starting point, and Geneva, its intended destination.
"This has been a horrible week," said the Rev Richard Walsh, pausing to choke back tears in his first sermon of the day at St Peter's Anglican Church. "I'm sorry, I'll be OK."
The aircraft crashed 16 minutes after the pilots reported smoke in the cockpit and decided to attempt an emergency landing. The aircraft started toward the Halifax airport, but made two sharp turns as it tried to descend and dump fuel.
In Zurich, Swissair officials said they had reconstructed the final phase of the flight, based on information from Canadian investigators. They said the plane could not have made a direct approach to Halifax from where it made the first distress call because it was flying too high and was too heavy.
The distress call was made 70 miles out of Halifax, but the pilots would have needed 130 miles to make a direct landing, Swissair's chief pilot, Mr Rainer Hiltebrand, said.
However, he said attempting to land in Halifax was still better than trying for Boston, which the pilots initially suggested to controllers.
Grief turned to joy at a wedding in Salzburg, when it was found that 15 guests, including the bride's parents, had failed to book themselves, as planned, on Swissair 111. Ms Tonya Lutz, a US citizen, married Mr Martin Scheichl in the Austrian city yesterday, after her parents and other guests arrived safely.