The chief coordinator of a multinational mission to find a missing submersible near the Titanic wreck insisted on Thursday that he remains focused on rescuing the five-member crew alive, as concerns grew that their oxygen had run out.
“We continue to find in particularly complex cases that people’s will to live really needs to be accounted for as well. And so we’re continuing to search and proceed with rescue efforts,” the US Coast Guard’s Rear Admiral John Mauger told NBC Today show.
Air to a missing submersible with five people on board was expected to last just a few more hours if that on Thursday (today), the fifth day of a desperate multinational search in the vast Atlantic waters around the wreck of the Titanic.
The minivan-sized Titan, operated by US-based OceanGate Expeditions, began its descent at 1200 GMT on Sunday but lost contact with its support ship near the end of what should have been a two-hour dive to the century-old shipwreck.
Having set off with 96 hours of air, according to the company, its oxygen tanks would likely be depleted some time on Thursday. The question of precisely when depends on factors such as whether the craft still has power and how to calm those on board are, experts say, and assumes the Titan is still intact.
Suleman and Shahzada Dawood. — Reuters
Engro Corp Vice Chairman Shahzada Dawood, his 19-year-old son Suleman, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush were on board the craft.
Rescue teams and relatives and friends of the Titan’s five occupants took hope when the US Coast Guard said on Wednesday that Canadian search planes had recorded undersea noises using sonar buoys earlier that day and on Tuesday.
But the Coast Guard said remote-controlled underwater search vehicles directed to where the noises were detected had not yielded results and officials said the sounds might not have originated from the Titan.
“When you’re in the middle of a search-and-rescue case, you always have hope,” Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick said on Wednesday, adding analysis of the noises was inconclusive.
Organisers of the multinational response — which includes US and Canadian military planes, coast guard ships and teleguided robots — are focusing their efforts in the North Atlantic close to multiple “underwater noises” detected by sonar.
The French research ship Atalante, equipped with a robotic diving craft capable of reaching depths even below the Titanic wreck which lies about 12,500 feet below the surface, was moving into the area.
The French robot, called Victor 6,000, has arms that can be remotely controlled to help free a trapped craft or hook it to a ship to haul it up. The US Navy is sending a special salvage system designed to lift large undersea objects.
