(Trends Wide) — A submarine carrying five people to view the wreckage of the Titanic, at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, is still missing. There is an important search operation by the authorities of the United States and Canada.
The Titan submarine was en route to the famous wreck, off the coast of St John’s, Newfoundland, in Canada, when it lost contact with its support ship, leaving those on board with only enough oxygen for 3-4 days.
This is what we know so far.
How did they disappear?
The submarine was part of an eight-day voyage conducted by OceanGate Expeditions. The voyage is based in Newfoundland, with participants first traveling 400 nautical miles to the wreck site, which is about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The submarine began its two-hour descent toward the wreck on Sunday morning. She lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship carrying the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes after she landed, authorities said.
Search operations began later that day.
It is still unclear what happened to the sub, why it lost contact, and how close it was to the Titanic when it disappeared.
Who’s on board?
The five people on board include a pilot and four “mission specialists,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the US Coast Guard’s First District.
A United Arab Emirates-based British businessman, Hamish Harding, is one of those on board, according to a social media post by the company he owns, Action Aviation.
“The submarine had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving,” the company said in an Instagram post on Sunday.
Hamish Harding posted an image of the submersible to his social media accounts on Saturday, June 17. (Credit: Hamish Harding/Facebook)
Harding was one of the first people to travel the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest known point on Earth.
This Saturday he wrote about the Titanic mission: “I am proud to finally announce that I have joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC mission as a mission specialist on the submarine heading to Titanic.”
Harding had posted on social media on Saturday that diver Paul-Henri (PH) Nargeolet was scheduled to dive with him on Sunday. Nargeolet led several expeditions to the Titanic and oversaw the recovery of many artifacts from the wreck, according to the E/M Group, where Nargeolet was director of Underwater Research.
Trends Wide has independently attempted to contact Nargeolet without success.
A Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood, and her son Sulaiman Dawood were also on board, according to a statement issued by the family on Tuesday. Contact has been lost and limited information is available, he said.
Shahzada Dawood is a trustee of the SETI Institute, a research organization in California, according to her website. He is also vice president of the Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group, a conglomerate of several family-owned companies.
The fifth passenger on board is the CEO and founder of the company leading the voyage, Ocean Gate, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan.
Multiple authorities have said there were five people aboard the missing submarine.
Trends Wide has reached out to Ocean Gate for comment but has not received an immediate response.
Authorities have not publicly identified the passengers on board and said Monday they are still notifying their families.
OceanGate’s website says its expeditions, which cost more than $250,000, typically involve a pilot, a “content expert” and three paying passengers.
How much time do you have?
Coast Guard officials estimated Monday afternoon that the sub had “between 70 and 96 full hours” of oxygen, which could give rescuers until Friday to locate and recover the craft.
But the depth of the area where they disappeared could present a challenge. The deepest underwater rescue ever carried out was that of Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson, who were rescued from the Pisces III submersible at depths of 1,575 feet –480 meters–, in 1973. They were trapped for 76 hours before finally being transported to the surface.
The wreckage of the Titanic is much deeper, almost 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) below sea level.
Other factors complicating the search include its remote location, local weather conditions, and unknowns such as the condition of the sub and whether it has working equipment such as acoustic emitters that can be detected by search teams.
Hamish Harding posted an image on social media of the Polar Prince, the vessel used to transport the submersible to the Titanic wreck site. (From Hamish Harding/Facebook)
According to Trends Wide meteorologists, the area is experiencing choppy seas with swells up to 1.8 meters high and foggy conditions. While not unusual for the region, this could cause search party delays due to the difficulty in using aerial equipment in low cloud.
What is the submarine?
According to OceanGate, Titan is a 23,000-pound (10,432 kg) submersible made of carbon fiber and titanium.
As a safety feature, the sub uses a “proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system” that analyzes the pressure on the vessel and the integrity of the structure, the company claims. Any problems detected would trigger an “early warning” for the pilot, to allow “sufficient time to… return safely to the surface.”
Unlike a traditional submarine, this type of submarine has limited power reserves, so it needs a mother ship that can launch and recover it, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When CBS correspondent David Pogue took a trip on the Titan to the Titanic wreck last year at the invitation of OceanGate, he said the hatch was sealed from the outside with 17 bolts: there was no other way out.
Without GPS underwater, the sub is only guided by text messages from the surface ship. On Pogue’s voyage, communications went down during a dive and the sub was lost for more than two hours, she said.
Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine captain and analyst with the Center for a New American Security, told Trends Wide it doesn’t bode well that search teams still haven’t heard from the missing sub.
“If they had a relatively minor issue that forced them to surface unexpectedly, you’d think a homing beacon would have been detected by now. If instead they are stuck at the bottom for some reason, I have not yet heard of a rescue capability that can get them back in time,” he said.
What search operations are underway? How could it be rescued?
The US Coast Guard tweeted Monday that the search will continue overnight. It began scanning the ocean surface on Sunday, when the submarine was first reported missing.
Ships, planes and radar equipment were deployed to scan over the water in case the submarine had surfaced. Sonar buoys and sonar equipment on commercial vessels at the site were also being used to detect sounds underwater.
The US Coast Guard is coordinating the search with the US Navy, the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Army.
The US Air Force’s 106th Rescue Wing has flown over the area, as have two C-130 flights. The Canadian Coast Guard’s subsurface and surface search will continue this Tuesday morning.
OceanGate said it has received assistance from government agencies and deepwater companies. The Polar Prince, the ship that supported the submarine, is also helping in the search, a co-owner said.
But finding the submarine is only the first step; rescuing it could be another challenge.
Depending on where and how deep the submarine is, there may be limited options for rescue ships.
For example, the US Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines generally operate at 800 feet or less (362 meters), which means they cannot dive to the bottom of the ocean, where the water pressure in the hull of the submarine could cause it to implode.
The Navy has specialized rescue submarines, but even those can only perform rescues at depths of up to 2,000 feet (907 meters), according to the Navy’s Submarine Rescue Command.
During the 1973 salvage, authorities used other submarines and a Navy-developed, remotely-operated recovery vessel to connect lines to the Pisces III, which were then used to bring it back to the surface.
It’s unclear if these methods could work for Titan, given the uncertainty about its location.
Trends Wide’s Brad Lendon, Eric Levenson and Raja Razek contributed to this report.
