In a race against the clock at sea, an expanding international fleet of ships and planes searched Tuesday for a submersible. which disappeared in the North Atlantic while carrying five people to the sinking of the Titanic.
US Coast Guard officials said the search covered 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) but there was no sign of the missing sub known as the Titan. Although they plan to continue the search, time is running out as the ship does not have two days of oxygen left.
“This is a complex search, and the joint team is working around the clock,” Cpt. Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District in Boston spoke at a press conference.
Frederick said the crew had about 41 hours of oxygen left as of Tuesday afternoon. He added that an underwater robot has begun searching around the Titanic and there will be a push to get rescue equipment to the area if the sub is found.
Authorities reported the carbon-fiber vessel as overdue on Sunday night, which began searching waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. On board was a pilot, the famous British adventurer Hamish Harding, two members of an iconic Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert.
The submersible had a 96-hour supply of oxygen when it was put into the sea around 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, a consultant with OceanGate Expeditions, which is managing the mission. That means the oxygen supply could run out Thursday morning.
CBS News journalist David Pogue, who traveled to the Titanic aboard the Titan last year, said the vehicle uses two communication systems: text messages back and forth to the ship above and safety pings. which is released every 15 minutes to show that the river is still working.
Both systems stopped about an hour and 45 minutes after Titan sank.
“There are only two things that can be explained. Either they lost all power or the ship broke the hull and it blew up immediately. Both are hopeless,” Pogue told the CBC on Tuesday.
The submersible has seven backup systems that return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that fall and an inflatable balloon. A system designed to work even if everyone on board is unconscious, Pogue said.
Eric Fusil, director of the University of Adelaide’s Shipbuilding Hub, said there were other scenarios that could disrupt communications, including an electrical fire that could create toxic fumes and render the ship unconscious. crew members.
Another possibility is that the Titan was involved in the wreck of the Titanic and was stuck there, Fusil said.
“What I want to believe … is that Titan suffers a power loss, but they can still come back to the surface” and be seen by planes and ships on the surface, he said.
Experts say rescuers face serious challenges.
Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, said that submersibles usually have a reduced weight, which is “a mass that they can release in case of an emergency to bring it to the surface using buoyancy.”
“If there’s a power failure and/or a communication failure, it can happen, and the submersible will then be bobbing on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.
Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, for which the prognosis is not good, he said.
“If it falls to the ocean floor and can’t get up under its own power, the options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible may not exist, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can go that deep, and certainly not divers.”
The Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, which is supporting the Titan, will continue to conduct surface searches with assistance from a Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, the Coast Guard said on Twitter. Two US Lockheed C-130 Hercules planes also conducted overflights.
The Canadian military dropped sonar buoys to listen for any possible sounds from Titan.
OceanGate expeditions to the Titanic wreck site including archaeologists and marine biologists. The company also brings people who pay to come along. They take turns operating the sonar equipment and performing other duties on the submersible.
Authorities have not formally identified those on boardalthough some names have been confirmed, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who, according to the company, served as a crew member.
Rush told The Associated Press in June 2021 that Titan’s technology is “excellent content” and was developed with the help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers.
“This is the only submersible – crewed submersible – made of carbon fiber and titanium,” Rush said, calling it “the largest carbon fiber structure we know of,” with a 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and 3.25-inch thick. titanium.
Other passengers include Harding, a billionaire adventurer living in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates; Pakistani nationals Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, whose eponymous company invests across the country in the agriculture, industry and health sectors; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Greg Stone, a longtime California-based ocean scientist and a friend of Rush’s, called the lost submersible “a fundamentally new submarine design” that shows great promise for the future. research. Unlike its predecessors, Titan is not spherical in shape.
“Stockton is a risk taker. He’s smart … he has a vision. He wants to push things forward,” Stone said.
The expedition is OceanGate’s third annual voyage to recount the disaster of the Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of its nearly 2,200 passengers and crew. Since the discovery of the wreckage in 1985, it has been slowly degraded by metal-eating bacteria.
OceanGate’s website describes the “mission support fee” for the 2023 expedition as $250,000 per person.
Recalling his own trip aboard the Titan, Pogue said the ship turned in search of the Titanic.
“There is no GPS underwater, so the surface ship has to guide the sub to the sinking by sending text messages,” Pogue said in a segment that aired on “CBS Sunday Morning.” “But on this dive, communications somehow broke down. The sub never found the breakdown.”
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Associated Press writers Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report .
