Rescuers are racing against the clock to find a submersible that went missing in the Atlantic Ocean on a mission to document the wreckage of the Titanic.
Five people are reported to be onboard Titan, part of a mission by OceanGate Expeditions, which was reported overdue on Sunday some 700 kilometers south of St. John’s.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which is searching for the missing submersible with assistance from the Canadian Coast Guard, said Tuesday it is expanding its search into the Atlantic’s deeper waters.
![Click to play video: 'Missing Titanic sub: Coast Guard says 70-96 hours of emergency air remaining for rescue'](https://i2.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/dp97ljrk7p-b2nbl1i2im/MO_TITANTIC_VMS.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
However, time is of the essence. The submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply when it was put to sea at roughly 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate.
Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray told reporters in Ottawa Tuesday the Canadian Coast Guard ship John Cabot, which is equipped with sonar, is headed to the site. Two other ships were in St. John’s ready to port equipment as necessary.
“There is a unified command under the U.S. Coast Guard leadership that Canada is playing a very committed role in. We are working to find this submersible and if at all possible, find it and bring it up to the surface and bring it to in time to rescue those aboard,” Murray said, adding the U.K. and Germany were also assisting in the search.
Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, which was supporting the Titan, reportedly lost contact with the vessel roughly an hour and 45 minutes after it submerged.
What caused it to lose contact with the Polar Prince is not clear.
This Global News graphic shows the distance between St. John’s and the last point of contact with Titan, an OceanGate Expeditions that went missing Sunday.
Global News graphic
The U.S. Coast Guard said one pilot and four “mission specialists” were aboard. Those mission specialists are people who pay a reported US$250,000 a piece to come along on OceanGate’s expeditions. They take turns operating sonar equipment and performing other tasks in the five-person submersible.
The Polar Prince was scheduled to do surface searches throughout Monday and a Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft was resuming its surface and subsurface search in the morning, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Twitter. Two U.S. Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft also have conducted overflights.
The Canadian military also dropped sonar buoys to listen for any possible sounds from the Titan.
![Click to play video: 'Missing Titanic sub: How could the vessel go missing?'](https://i0.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/brvglrjz3z-k4pxqb95af/230619-NEETU.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
CBS journalist David Pogue, who went on the trip last year, noted his vessel got turned around looking for the Titanic.
“There’s no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in a segment aired on CBS Sunday Morning.
“But on this dive, communications somehow broke down. The sub never found the wreck.”
Trip was OceanGate’s third annual voyage to Titanic
The goal of OceanGate’s expeditions has been chronicling the Titanic’s deterioration as well as the underwater ecosystem that shipwrecks often spawn.
The expedition was OceanGate’s third annual voyage to chronicle the deterioration of Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew. Since its discovery in 1985, it has been slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria. Some experts have predicted Titanic could vanish in a matter of decades as holes yawn in the hull and sections disintegrate.
Titan weighs 20,000 pounds in the air, but is ballasted to be neutrally buoyant once it reaches the seafloor, the company said. In a May 2021 court filing, OceanGate said Titan had an “unparalleled safety feature” that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive.
![Click to play video: 'Missing Titanic tour submersible: Search operation underway off N.L. coast'](https://i1.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/n5w2g2tets-25eci4p5r0/230619-ERIC.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
During its expedition in 2022, OceanGate reported that the submersible had a battery issue on its first dive, and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform, according to a November court filing.
More missions, however, followed. OceanGate has described the submersible as a “state-of-the-art vessel” that “is lighter, more spacious and more comfortable than any other deep-diving submersible exploring the ocean today.”
![Click to play video: 'BC businessman remembers Titanic excursion on submarine'](https://i2.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/3qxcsiphv2-9nenjeeel5/WEB_TITANIC.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
OceanGate said its focus was on those aboard and their families.
“We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep-sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible,” it said in a statement.
Expert says rescuers face steep challenges
Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles typically have a drop weight — that is, “a mass they can release in the case of an emergency to bring them up to the surface using buoyancy.”
“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.
Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, he added.
![Click to play video: '1st 3D scan of Titanic shipwreck unveiled'](https://i2.wp.com/media.globalnews.ca/videostatic/news/vwefayklqk-ay004p28iq/TITANIC.jpg?w=1040&quality=70&strip=all)
“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” Greig said.
“While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”
Even if they could go that deep, he doubts they could attach to the hatch of OceanGate’s submersible.
— with files from The Associated Press and Reuters
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Source link : CNN