In a race against time on the high seas, a growing foreign armada of ships and planes searched Tuesday for a submersible that disappeared in the North Atlantic while carrying five other people to the wreckage of the Titanic.
U. S. Coast Guard officials U. S. officials said the search covered 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) but uncovered no symptoms of the lost submarine known as Titan. .
“This is a big search and the unified team is running 24 hours a day,” Cape Town said. Jamie Frederick of the Coast Guard’s First District in Boston said at a news conference.
Frederick said the team had about 41 hours of oxygen left at noon Tuesday. He added that an underwater robot had begun searching the vicinity of the Titanic and that there was a push to bring the rescue team to the scene in case the submarine found it.
Authorities said the carbon-fiber vessel expired Sunday night, prompting the search in waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. Petersburg. John’s, Newfoundland — Aboard a pilot, famed British adventurer Hamish Harding, two members of an iconic Pakistani business family and Titanic expert.
RELATED: Everett Company’s Submersible Ship Disappears During Titanic Wreck Expedition
The submersible had a 96-hour oxygen source when it set sail around 6 a. m. Sunday, according to OceanGate Expeditions adviser David Concannon, who oversaw the mission. That means the oxygen source could run out by Thursday morning.
CBS News reporter David Pogue, who visited the Titanic aboard the Titan last year, said the vehicle uses two communication systems: text messages that pass back and forth to a surface shipment and protective pings that are broadcast every 15 minutes to indicate that the submarine is still running.
These two systems stopped about an hour and forty-five minutes after Titan dived.
“There are two things they can simply mean. Either they lost all power, or the shipment broke the hull and imploded instantly. They’re both desperately desperate,” Pogue told CBC on Tuesday.
The submersible had seven backup formulas to bring to the surface, falling sandbags, lead pipes and an inflatable balloon. One formula is designed to work even if everyone on board is unconscious, Pogue said.
Eric Fusil, director of the University of Adelaide’s Shipbuilding Centre, said there are other scenarios that may have cut off communications, adding an electric chimney that can create poisonous gases and render the team unconscious.
Another option is that Titan became entangled in the wreckage of the Titanic and trapped there, Fusil said.
“What I would like Array. . . is that Titan suffered a loss of energy, but they can still surface” and be seen through aircraft and surface ships, he said.
RELATED: Ongoing Search for Everett Company’s Lost Submarine That Leads People to See Titanic
Skilled rescuers face enormous challenges.
Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles generally have a drop weight, which is “a mass they can release in an emergency to bring them to the surface buoyantly. “
“If there had been a power outage and/or a communication outage, it’s possible it just would have happened, and the submersible would surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.
Their situation is a leak in the shell of the strain, in which case the diagnosis is good, he said.
“If they pass it to the bottom of the sea and it can’t climb on its own, the features are very limited,” Greig said. “Although the submersible is still intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few ships that can pass that far, and indeed not divers. “
The Canadian is studying the icebreaker Polar Prince, which supported the Titan, to continue its search on the surface with the help of a Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, the Coast Guard said on Twitter. Two U. S. Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. U. S. flights also flew overhead.
The Canadian military launched sonar buoys to pay attention to every imaginable sound of the Titan.
OceanGate’s expeditions to the Titanic wreck site feature archaeologists and marine biologists. The company also brings in other paying people. They take turns operating sonar devices and performing other responsibilities in the submersible.
Authorities have yet to officially identify those on board, though some names have been confirmed, adding OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who the company says is part of the crew.
Rush told The Associated Press in June 2021 that the Titan generation was “very progressive” and evolved with the help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers.
“It’s the only submersible, manned submersible, that’s made of carbon fiber and titanium,” Rush said, calling it the “largest carbon fiber design we know of,” with carbon fiber five inches thick and 3. 25 inches thick titanium.
Other passengers included Harding, a billionaire adventurer living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Pakistani citizens Shahzada Dawood and her son Suleman, whose eponymous company invests nationwide in agriculture and fitness; and French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Greg Stone, a longtime California-based oceanologist and friend of Rush’s, called the lost submersible a “fundamentally new underwater design” that has shown wonderfully promise for long-term research. Unlike its predecessors, the Titan is not round in shape.
“Stockton was a threat taker. He was smart. . . He had a vision. He sought to get things done,” Stone said.
The third annual voyage of the OceanGate expedition to document the deterioration of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing about 700 of the approximately 2200 passengers and crew. Since the wreck was discovered in 1985, it has slowly succumbed to metal. -eating bacteria.
OceanGate’s online page describes the “mission fee” for the 2023 expedition at $250,000 based on the same day.
Recalling his own trip aboard the Titan, Pogue said the ship turned around in search of the Titanic.
“There is no underwater GPS, so the surface shipment is meant to query the submarine about the sinking via text message,” Pogue said in a segment aired on “CBS Sunday Morning. “”But on this dive, communications were disrupted. The submarine never discovered the wreckage.
___
Associated Press editors Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.