The U.S. Coast Guard captain declined to set a time limit for the recovery of the five passengers on the Titan, as the 6.7-foot-long submarine lost on a voyage to the Titanic’s wreckage is called, alive.
Jamie Frederick says there are several factors that can vary the calculation of time, namely the way oxygen is managed, even assuming the submarine can be on the surface.
“This is a 100% search and rescue mission. We are in the middle of a search and rescue mission and will continue to use all available resources to find Titan and crew members,” he said. “We must remain optimistic and hopeful,” he added.
The official assured that the authorities are bringing together specialists in different fields to reach the area where the submarine is located and regretted that the searches at the place where underwater noises were heard had no effect. “These sounds will be taken into account, but no further search has been carried out,” he stressed, ensuring that the search area is expanded every hour.
Frederick also said the weather has made the search difficult.
David Concannon, an OceanGate Expeditions consultant who oversaw the mission, said the submarine had a four-day supply of oxygen when it put to sea on Sunday morning.
CBS News journalist David Pogue, who traveled aboard the Titanic last year, said the vehicle uses two communication systems: text messages exchanged with a surface vessel; and safety signals sent out every 15 minutes to indicate that the submarine is still operational.
Both systems shut down about an hour and 45 minutes after the Titan submerged on Sunday, said the company OceanGate Expeditions, which owns the ship and organizer of trips to the Titanic’s wreckage.
“That means one of two things: either they lost all power or the submarine broke through the hull and immediately imploded. Both are devastating,” Pogue said.
On Tuesday, France announced that the Ifremer Institute of Ocean Sciences had sent a ship, the Atalante, equipped with an underwater robot, the Victor 6000, to search for the submarine.
The Victor 6000 will reach its destination today and dive to a depth of approximately 4,000 meters to conduct searches.
The remains of the Titanic – which sank after colliding with an iceberg in 1912 – lie at a depth of about 3,800 meters and about 640 kilometers south of the Canadian island of Newfoundland.
According to the Canadian Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, quoted by the US news agency Associated Press, communications were lost when the ship was about 700 kilometers south of São João da Terra Nova.
Source: DN
