Rescue teams were racing on Wednesday to trace the origin of sounds heard from the depths of the North Atlantic in a search for a tourist submersible with five people on board that vanished on its descent to the century-old wreck of the Titanic. The U.S. Coast Guard said remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches were deployed in the area where Canadian aircraft detected the undersea noises on Tuesday.
The Titan, owned by OceanGate Expeditions, went missing Sunday after losing contact with its support ship an hour and 45 minutes into a scheduled dive. A massive search ensued, with the crew of the carbon-fiber vessel believed to have only 96 hours’ worth of oxygen on board when it set sail.
As the clock ticked in the last 24 hours of the missing craft’s presumed air supply, the Titan’s mothership sent a C-17 cargo plane from Buffalo to St. John’s, Newfoundland, with a particular container carrying specialized rescue equipment and supplies. A Coast Guard official said three more C-17 transports are en route to the site, where three other USCG surface ships and an ROV are also stationed.
According to CNN, a Coast Guard official said the crews of those ships would continue to search in the area where a P-3 Canadian military plane picked up undersea sounds. The USCG spokesman said that crews would use sonar to listen for the sounds, which could be the submersible’s occupants banging on their hull to signal they are alive and need help.
According to Alistair Greig, a marine engineering professor at University College London, the Titan’s pilot would have likely released weights to float back to the surface in a mid-dive emergency. However, locating the van-sized submersible in the vast Atlantic without communication could prove challenging, mainly if the craft is still at the Titan’s deepest point — more than 3.2 miles down, where no sunlight penetrates.
Despite those challenges, some adventurers still harbor hope. The president of the Explorers Club, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, told members in an open letter that he believes there’s a “strong possibility” that the Titan is intact and the people on board are alive. He added that he spoke with officials in Congress, the U.S. military, and the White House, adding that those conversations have given him “much more confidence” than before.
The Titan has two communication systems: text messages that can go back and forth to a surface ship and safety pings, which emit every 15 minutes to show the submersible is functioning correctly. Both of those systems stopped working shortly after the sub disappeared. A CBS News journalist who traveled to the Titan last year says the absence of those signals means one of two things: the submersible lost power or developed a hull breach and imploded instantly.
