Titanic Submarine Search: Few Hours Of Oxygen Left; Underwater Sounds Heard For 2nd Day In A Row

Five days since Titan, the tourist submersible operated by OceanGate Expeditions to explore the wreckage of Titanic, went missing in the North Atlantic, rescuers are now racing against time in a last-ditch effort to rescue the five men onboard the vessel.

Titanic

Current oxygen status

The oxygen supply onboard is rapidly dwindling as the 96-hour emergency capability will likely run out Thursday morning (local time). Though the US Coast Guard said that authorities are still hoping to save those onboard, estimates point to less than 7 hours of oxygen left in the vessel.

According to the company, the Titan set off with 96 hours of air, meaning its oxygen tanks would likely be depleted sometime on Thursday morning. Experts said how long the air would actually last depended on various factors, such as whether the submersible still had power and how calm those onboard remained.

Still, the countdown to oxygen depletion posed only a hypothetical deadline, assuming the missing vessel was even still intact rather than trapped or damaged in punishing depths at or near the sea floor.

Titanic Missing Sub

Sounds heard underwater for 2nd day in a row

A US Coast Guard official said that while the sounds that have been detected offered a chance to narrow the search, their exact location and source haven't yet been determined. Camera-equipped remote-operated robots are playing a pivotal role in search ops.

There are many other potential sources of sound underwater, including from fish, other animals and, of course, human-made instruments, according to Matt Dzieciuch, an ocean acoustics expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

While the Coast Guard said search teams heard banging noises at 30-minute intervals, it's still unclear whether the banging noises were a true signal of life.

NYT

OceanGate was warned of putting passengers in 'extreme danger'

Newly uncovered allegations also suggest significant warnings were made about the vessel's safety before its disappearance. OceanGate Expeditions was repeatedly warned that there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way it was developed, documents show.

David Lochridge, OceanGate's director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached "extreme depths," according to a lawsuit filed that year in US District Court in Seattle.

OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

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The 5 people onboard

Lost aboard the vessel is pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company leading the expedition, and his passengers are a British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, one of Pakistan's richest father-son-duo Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, and a Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

What happened?

The submersible was launched at 8 am local time and was expected to resurface at 3 pm. But, an hour and 45 minutes into their dive, they lost contact with the Polar Prince, a Canadian Research Vessel acting as the submersible's surface support vessel.

US Today

At 5.40 pm EDT, the Coast Guard received a report on an overdue 21-foot submersible from Polar Prince with five people on board, diving to view the wreckage of the Titanic, approximately 900 nautical miles East of Cape Cod. Since then, the US Coast Guard, along with Canadian counterparts and other private entities have been involved in a frantic search-and-rescue operation.

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