Missing Sub-Titanic Updates: Last Search Efforts

The search for a missing submarine with five people on board took a bleak turn Thursday when the U.S. Coast Guard said a debris field was found on the ocean floor near the Titanic, and the critical 96-hour mark passed when the ‘breathable air might have run out.

The Coast Guard’s Twitter post did not provide details, such as whether officials believe the wreckage is connected to the Titan, which was on an expedition to view the remains of the Titanic. He said the wreckage was discovered in the search area by a remotely operated underwater robot and was being assessed.

The Titan was estimated to have a four-day supply of breathing air when it launched on Sunday morning in the North Atlantic, but experts have stressed that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers had taken measures to conserve breathable air. . And it is not known if they survived from the year the disappearance of the subordinate.

first responders they have rushed ships, planes and other equipment at the place of disappearance. On Thursday, the US Coast Guard said an underwater robot sent by a Canadian ship had reached the seabed, while a French research institute said a diving robot with cameras, lights and arms had also gone join the operation.

The authorities are waiting underwater sounds could help narrow their search, whose coverage area has expanded to thousands of miles, twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) deep. Coast Guard officials said underwater noises were detected in the search area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Jamie Pringle, an expert in forensic geosciences at Keele University in England, said that although the noises came from the submersible, “the lack of oxygen is key now; even if they find it, they still have to surface and get rid of it.”

Titan was reported to have passed Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, on its way to where the iconic ocean liner sank more than a century ago. OceanGate Expeditions, which is leading the voyage, has been chronicling the decline of the Titanic and the underwater ecosystem around it through annual voyages since 2021.

By Thursday morning, hopes were fading that anyone aboard the ship would be found alive.

Many hurdles remain: from identifying the ship’s location, to getting there with rescue teams, to bringing it to the surface, assuming it’s still intact. And all of this must happen before the passengers’ oxygen supply runs out.

Dr Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey, highlighted the difficulty of finding something the size of the submarine, which is about 22 feet (6.5 meters) long and 9 feet (almost 3 meters) high .

“You’re talking about totally dark environments,” where an object can be missed several tens of meters away, he said. “It’s just a needle in a haystack situation unless you have a pretty precise location.”

Newly discovered allegations suggest there had been significant vessel safety warnings during the development of the submersible.

Broadcasters from all over the world news started at critical time on Thursday with news of the submersible. The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite channel showed an on-air clock counting down to its estimate of when the air might end.

Capt. Jamie Frederick of the Coast Guard’s First District said a day earlier that authorities still hoped to save the five passengers on board.

“This is a search and rescue mission, 100 percent,” he said Wednesday.

While the sounds that have been detected offered an opportunity to narrow the search, their exact location and source had not yet been determined, Frederick said.

“We don’t know what they are, to be honest,” he said.

Retired Navy Capt. Carl Hartsfield, now director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, said the sounds have been described as “thumping noises” but warned that search teams “must put all image in context and must eliminate possible artificial sources other than Titan.”

The report was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews who cannot communicate with the surface are taught to hit the hull of their sub to be detected by sonar.

The US Navy said in a statement on Wednesday that it was sending a specialized salvage system capable of lifting “large, bulky and heavy underwater objects such as aircraft or small ships”.

The Titan weighs 20,000 pounds (9,000 kilograms). The U.S. Navy’s Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System is designed to lift up to 60,000 pounds (27,200 kilograms), the Navy said on its website.

Pilot Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, has been lost on board the ship. Its passengers are: the British adventurer Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

In Pakistan’s first comments since the Titan went missing, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Thursday that officials are confident in the search efforts.

“We would not like to speculate about the circumstances of this incident and would also like to respect the wishes of the Dawood family that their privacy be respected,” he said.

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed in U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees the matters related to the wreck of the Titanic.

One of the company’s first customers characterized a dive he made at the site two years ago as a “kamikaze operation”.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal on the floor. You can’t stand it. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting near or on top,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to save energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent light pole.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and balance weights. In total, the trip took 10.5 hours.

The submersible had seven safety systems for returning to the surface, including sandbags and falling lead tubes and an inflatable balloon.

Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and professor of marine biology at the University of Portsmouth, England, said the Titan’s disappearance highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.

“I think it’s important to remember that for humans, the deep sea is a very inhospitable place,” he said.

“Even the most reliable technology can fail and therefore accidents will happen. With the growth of high-altitude tourism, we have to expect more incidents like this.”

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Danica Kirka in London; and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.