The US Coast Guard and other search and rescue crews are expanding their search into deeper waters as they hunt for a submersible that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic. The vessel, called Titan, went missing on Sunday with five people on board. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger has said that they have been working through the night with a broad group of partners to bring all capabilities to bear looking on both the surface and now expanding to a subsurface in the area. NATO rescue vessel cannot reach required depths, so the rescue team is racing against time to find the missing submersible as its oxygen supply dwindles.
Race Against Time
The submersible, Titan, had a 96-hour oxygen supply in case of emergencies. The five people on board are British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, chief executive and founder of OceanGate Expeditions Stockton Rush, and French submersible pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet. The team has around two days of life support left. The search and rescue operation is taking place some 435 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada, involving the US Coast Guard as well as Canadian and US aircraft. The Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, which was supporting the Titan, reportedly lost contact with the vessel about an hour and 45 minutes after it submerged.
The search and rescue team faces a tough challenge as the wreckage of the Titanic that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg lies at about 12,500 feet (3,810 meters), and the Titan submersible usually takes two hours to descend to the wreck. Jannicke Mikkelsen, an explorer and friend of Hamish Harding, said that she was terrified if the submersible was stuck at the bottom of the sea. However, she believed Mr. Harding would be an important asset to the others in the submersible, as he would be calm and collected, going through the emergency checklists and procedures together with the captain of the submersible. She added that he would also be a good inspiration to the rest of the team to keep calm. Mikkelsen said: “I’m terrified if they are stuck at the bottom of the ocean with 96 hours of air and not able to get back to the surface – this is what I fear the most.”
It is still unclear whether the vessel has resurfaced or how close to the surface it might have got. The submersible could have got entangled in the Titanic wreak, sunk deeper, or floated eventually to the surface. If the sub got into trouble and warning alerts were triggered, emergency measures should have been implemented to bring the submersible to the surface. These would have included dropping weights to bring the sub slowly to the surface. It is unknown if there was an automatic system on board or when systems would automatically trigger the release. In a worst-case scenario, if the sub’s pressure hull imploded, there would have been no survivors.
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