Rescue operations searching for the Titan submersible have focused their efforts on a remote area of the North Atlantic where a series of underwater noises have been detected. Noises were detected by Canadian P-3 aircraft on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, US Coast Guard officials said in a press conference this afternoon.
Experts have not yet identified the source of these noises, and officials have warned the sounds may not have originated from the missing vessel. Analysis of the noises has been “inconclusive”, Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick said. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches have been deployed in the area where the P-3 aircraft recorded the noises, US Coast Guard officials said.
The five passengers on board the missing Titan sub had 96 hours of breathable air, according to its operator OceanGate’s specifications. This would mean oxygen could run out by Thursday morning, but experts say the air supply depends on a range of factors.
More ships and underwater vessels are being brought in to join the search and rescue operations, US Coast Guard officials said. Three search vessels arrived on the scene on Wednesday, including one that has side-scanning sonar capabilities. The full scope of the search is twice the size of Connecticut and 2.5 miles (4km) deep, Capt Frederick said.
Documents show that the sub’s operator, OceanGate, had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed. David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible”.
The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles. Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extreme trips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
A man who was on the Titan last year told Sky News that the submersible “was not safe”. Speaking to the outlet, former passenger Arthur Loibl said that “everybody was nervous” during the 2021 expedition to the Titanic wreck.
Around the world, the story of the missing Titanic submersible and its rescue operation’s race against time has been riveting onlookers.
Views of the Titanic movie’s Wikipedia page surged on Wednesday, according to data from movie analytics site FlixPatrol as others find themselves caught up in the tragedy of the situation.
ErinGeary, a 27-year-old research assistant in Atlanta, Georgia, described feeling sad, anxious and mystified as she watched the rescue operation for the Titan submersible unfold. She said she and her father had gotten caught up imagining what survival tactics the five passengers might be resorting to.
On social media sites on Wednesday, commentary ranged from despair at the Titan occupants’ plight, to incredulity that anyone would want to embark on a risky mission in a small vessel.
Some people expressed frustration that the tourist voyage had received such an expensive rescue operation while bigger boat tragedies with less prominent passengers, such as the deadly wreck of a fishing boat carrying hundreds of migrant passengers near Greece last week, failed to rally the same public outcry.
In Boston, near the Coast Guard base that has been delivering public updates on the search, paralegal JennaRoat said on Wednesday that she had been captivated by the rescue efforts along with her family and friends.
There are several possible scenarios for what may have happened to the Titan submersible. Ron Allum, a deep-sea engineer and explorer, told the Guardian he believed it was unlikely that the vessel’s pressure hull had suffered a catastrophic failure:
Sound travels particularly well underwater.
A catastrophic implosion could be heard for thousands of miles and could be recorded.
An implosion would likely trigger signals in military hydrophones, devices used in the world’s oceans for recording or listening to underwater sounds.
Allum said:
To me it sounds like the sub’s pressure hull is intact, but it’s demobilised from power.
In such an event, the Titan is likely to have automatically dropped release weights to resurface. Allum added:
One of the reasons I suspect the sub may not be able to surface after dropping a release weight could be that it may be partially flooded … If you have water in the pressure hull, it’s quite a large volume. The drop weights usually aren’t that big, and that could be what’s keeping it on the bottom.
It also means that if the occupants are sitting in a half-flooded pressure hull, that could also be catastrophic. They could become hypothermic. I don’t know how well the CO2 scrubber systems would work if they’re wet.
Hypothermia is a significant risk as the water temperature around the depth of the Titanic, at 3,800m below sea level, is around 0 to 1C.
How long the Titan would take to retrieve if it is found depends on where and what state the vessel is in, Ron Allum, a deep-sea engineer and explorer, told the Guardian.
Allum worked with JamesCameron on his Last Mysteries of the Titanic live documentary in 2005, and Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger expedition to reach Earth’s deepest-known point in 2012.
He said:
If the pressure hull is flooded, you’re now talking about the dry mass of a vessel. You could be lifting a very heavy weight.
If the pressure hull is still intact … it’s going to be much lighter. Submersibles are generally neutrally buoyant.
If it were intact, an ROV [remotely operated vehicle] could attach to it and it could at least bring it up to shallower water where they could get a stronger lift cable to it to lift it out of the water.
The ROV may have to work around the wreckage … it may take a few hours to release the sub from the sea floor.
If the pressure hull was not flooded or hadn’t suffered a catastrophic failure then an ROV could possibly lift it from the sea floor – that ascent may take an hour or two.
I think you could get the sub out of the water in 12 hours or so.
If there was a catastrophic failure and the pressure hull is flooded, it’s going to be a different operation. There would be no race against time there because the occupants would not have survived.
If the Titan has already surfaced and is found on the ocean, opening the pressure hatch and extracting the people onboard would also take time. Allum said:
They are totally reliant on it being lifted out of the water either by their own launch and recovery mechanism or by another ship.
That extraction process would take around an hour if a surface support ship was nearby, he estimated.
Michael Guillen was the first correspondent to report live from the wreck of the Titanic but has recalled how the vessel he was on nearly ended up trapped.
Dr Guillen was working as science editor for America’s ABC network in 2000 when he travelled in a Russian submersible lowered from the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh research ship to tour the wreck.
He told BBC Radio 4 how they toured the bow “where everything had gone well” before they headed over to the stern where the vessel became trapped in the “huge” propeller” for an hour.
As we approached the stern area - flying over what’s called the debris field - we were caught up... in a very fast-moving underwater current. So we ended up getting stuck in the propeller.
All of a sudden, there was just a crash. We just felt this collision, and all of sudden debris... just huge chunks, rusted chunks of the Titanic started falling on top of us.
Dr Guillen said the pilot, who used to fly Russian Mig fighter jets, worked to jostle the submarine out “like you get your truck, your car stuck in the mud”. When it came lose, there was a feeling that the vessel was floating.
We didn’t want to say anything. I was like ‘My gosh, is it possible that we are out of this?’
Then I turned to Viktor, and I said: ‘OK?’ That was all.
He only spoke broken English. And I’ll never forget [how] he said this in a very low growling Russian accent: ‘No problem.’”
The passengers aboard the Titan are likely “freezing cold and very uncomfortable” while the await rescue according to experts monitoring the situation.
Retired Navy Captain David Marquet, a former submarine captain told CNN that the ambient temperature of the water around them made for a difficult environment for those five passengers aboard.
They’re freezing cold. The water entirely surrounding the ship is at freezing or slightly below. When they exhale, their breath condenses. There’s frost on the inside of the parts of the submarine. They’re all huddled together trying to conserve their body heat. They’re running low on oxygen and they’re exhaling carbon dioxide.
Captain Marquet also said the passengers on board will be trying to keep very still and calm to control their breathing for “as long as possible” to give rescuers the time they need to find them.
It’s not a zero percent chance of recovering them.
A British man who spent more than three days trapped in a vessel on the seabed said Wednesday he was “very frightened” for those on board a submersible missing near the wreck of the Titanic.
RogerMallinson and RogerChapman were saved in the deepest sub rescue in history after their small vessel became trapped on the Atlantic seabed off the coast of Ireland at a depth of 1,575 feet (480 metres) in 1973.
Mallinson, now aged 85, said he had deep concerns for the five on board the missing Titanic submersible
It sounds very, very dangerous, I’m very frightened for them.
If they are waiting to be rescued I think everyone wants to get into one area and make as much noise as they can.
I can’t understand how these people have been left abandoned out in the middle of the Atlantic without any communication, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Mallinson recalled feeling pessimistic during his own ordeal, saying that “once everything goes wrong, it goes wrong, and everybody that comes down seems to do wrong.”
It was very stressful, very cold and you just had to try and keep warm, you didn’t want to burn oxygen.
You got dressed up properly. I had a big woolly jumper, so I got my woolly jumper on and then my overalls back on top.
Roger Chapman didn’t have a woolly jumper so we had a lot of white rags and we mummied him.
Mallinson said he didn’t feel relief until the hatch opened, and a pod of watchful dolphins had left.
When the dolphins disappeared then you realised you’re safe. They stayed with us the whole 84 hours, thousands of dolphins arrived to look after us, they knew there was a problem.
You couldn’t talk to the surface on the underwater phone because thousands of dolphins chattered every time you spoke.
Former Royal Navy officer Chapman died in 2020, having been awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to shipping.
I’ve lost my mate One wonderful thing was that when he died I was able to go to his funeral and play the organ for him.
The search for the missing submersible off in the North Atlantic is raising legal questions about who might be responsible for any mishap.
In the case of the Titan, passengers on board were asked to sign a waiver form that stressed the risk of death, however legal experts say this may not be enough to protect the company from liability.
Speaking to MSNBC, Stanford University law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom said that a court may be open to setting aside the waiver.
Rescue operations searching for the Titan submersible have focused their efforts on a remote area of the North Atlantic where a series of underwater noises have been detected. Noises were detected by Canadian P-3 aircraft on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, US Coast Guard officials said in a press conference this afternoon.
Experts have not yet identified the source of these noises, and officials have warned the sounds may not have originated from the missing vessel. Analysis of the noises has been “inconclusive”, Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick said. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches have been deployed in the area where the P-3 aircraft recorded the noises, US Coast Guard officials said.
The five passengers on board the missing Titan sub had 96 hours of breathable air, according to its operator OceanGate’s specifications. This would mean oxygen could run out by Thursday morning, but experts say the air supply depends on a range of factors.
More ships and underwater vessels are being brought in to join the search and rescue operations, US Coast Guard officials said. Three search vessels arrived on the scene on Wednesday, including one that has side-scanning sonar capabilities. The full scope of the search is twice the size of Connecticut and 2.5 miles (4km) deep, Capt Frederick said.
Documents show that the sub’s operator, OceanGate, had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed. David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible”.
The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles. Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extreme trips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
A man who was on the Titan last year told Sky News that the submersible “was not safe”. Speaking to the outlet, former passenger Arthur Loibl said that “everybody was nervous” during the 2021 expedition to the Titanic wreck.
Per Reuters, Sean Leet, Horizon Maritime’s chairman, said “all protocols were followed” but did not specify how communication with the sub were cut off.
“There’s still life support available on the submersible, and we’ll continue to hold out hope until the very end,” Leet told reporters.
Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner, and maritime historian at Campbell University, tells New York Magazine that OceanGate wasn’t “breaking the laws, but they’re operating in a very gray area” .
The catch with OceanGate and the Titan was they were basically operating outside territorial waters — they’re past the 12-mile limit, and they’re launching off a Canadian vessel. There didn’t appear to really be any sort of jurisdictions applying to this vessel.
And so, the company wasn’t required to undergo inspections to follow rules that apply to submersibles being operated in US waters.
Billionaires and the Titanic: the allure of extreme expeditions
The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles.
Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extreme trips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Harding said that he would “finally” begin the 12,500ft dive at 4am on Sunday morning and it was “likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023”.
It wasn’t Harding’s first trip to the bottom of the seas. He has already navigated to the deepest point in the world’s oceans, the Mariana Trench, a depth of about 10,925 metres (36,000 feet) in the Pacific.
Harding has also been up very high. Last year, he was one of six people onboard the fifth human flight of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin New Shepard rocket that reached an apogee (height) of 351,000 ft (66 miles or 107 km) above earth.
These adventures do not come cheap.
Tickets for the Titanic submersible cost $250,000 (£195,000). The trip is organised by OceanGate, an exploration tourism company founded and run by Stockton Rush, an American multimillionaire. He is also missing, as is Paul Henri Nargeolet, the French deep-sea diver, who has visited the wreck site more than 30 times and is known as “Mr Titanic”.
A video advert for the trip says: “This is not a thrill ride for tourists, it is much more, it is an eight-day one-of-a kind experience.”
2.50pm GMT/9am ET: France says it will help with search by deploying Atalante, a ship equipped with a deep-sea diving vessel. It is expected to arrive late on Wednesday.
The Titan submersible is seen launching from a platform in an undated photo.
During the day: Sounds detected over several hours by Canadian Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, equipped with gear to trace submarines. CNN and Rolling Stone magazine report banging sounds at 30-minute intervals had been detected.
Wednesday
US Coast Guard, US navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expeditions establish a unified command to handle the search.
6am GMT/1am ET: US Coast Guard confirms Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises. It says remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches are directed to the area of the sounds and the data is also sent to US navy experts for analysis.
Thursday
10am GMT/5am ET: Approximate deadline for when the air in the submersible will run out, based on the US Coast Guard’s estimate that the Titan could have up to 96 hours of air supply from the time it was sealed.
A friend of Hamish Harding, the British billionaire on board the missing submersible, has called Harding “an extremely logical guy.”
Speaking to Sky News, Chris Brown said, “He’s an extremely logical guy, quite intellectual, I’m quite sure he’s going through all the possibilities. We don’t know what the situation is…
Whatever the situation is, I’m sure he’s going through all the permutations, combinations of what could be done… I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him who came up with the knock every 30 minutes so that you can tell it’s a human doing it rather than just pieces of metal banging together.”
“I’m sure he’ll be a calming influence on the other guys down there because it’s going to be everybody to keep calm and breathe as little as possible.”
Chris Brown, a friend of British billionaire Hamish Harding, has told Sky News that he is hoping for a miracle as the search for the missing Titan submersible continues.
