2023-06-22 05:52:41
The race against time to find a submersible that disappeared en route to the wreck of the Titanic entered a new phase of desperation on Thursday morning, as the last hours in which the small vehicle could still have oxygen approached.
Rescuers sent more boats to the area of the disappearance in the hope that sounds detected under the sea for the second day in a row might help narrow their search in the urgent international mission. But the crew had barely four days’ worth of oxygen when the ship, named Titan, went under at 6 a.m. Sunday.
Even the optimistic warned of the many hurdles: from locating the sub to reaching it with salvage equipment to bringing it to the surface, assuming it was still intact. And all this had to happen before the passengers’ oxygen ran out.
The search area was twice the size of the Bahamas, in areas up to 4,020 meters (13,200 feet) deep. Capt. Jamie Frederick of the Coast Guard First District said authorities still had hope of saving the five crew members.
“This is 100% a search and rescue mission,” Frederick said. “We will continue to put all the available assets we have into finding the Titan and the crew members.”
The area of the North Atlantic where the Titan disappeared Sunday is prone to fog and storms, making it an extremely difficult environment in which to conduct a search-and-rescue mission, said Donald Murphy, an oceanographer who worked as a scientist. Commander of the Coast Guard International Ice Patrol.
In the meantime, significant warnings about the safety of the vehicle that had been expressed during the development of the submersible became known.
Frederick said that while the sounds that were detected offered the possibility of narrowing the search area, their exact location and source have yet to be determined.
“We don’t know what they are, to be frank,” he said.
Carl Hartsfield, a retired Navy captain and now director of the Woods Hole Ocean Systems Laboratory, said the sounds have been described as “thumping noises” but cautioned that search crews “have to put the whole picture in context and eliminate potential man-made sources other than the Titan.”
The report was encouraging to some experts because submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to hit the hull of their ships to be detected by sonar.
A US Navy official said during a news briefing on Wednesday that a special naval salvage system that could be used to lift the Titan has arrived in San Juan, Canada, but it is expected to take another 24 hours to prepare it for launch. use. The Navy said in a statement that the equipment is capable of removing “large, bulky and heavy objects, such as planes or small ships, from the sea.”
On board the Titan was the pilot Stockton Rush, general director of the organizing company of the expedition, OceanGate. His passengers were a British adventurer, two members of a Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert.
Authorities said the 22-foot (6.7-meter) carbon-fiber boat had gone missing late Sunday, sparking a search in waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of San John, Newfoundland.
The submersible had a four-day supply of oxygen when it set sail around 6 a.m. Sunday, which could last until Thursday morning.
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Associated Press journalists Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Va.; and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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