Missing Titanic tourist sub could be stuck in famed shipwreck 12,500 feet underwater
The missing Titanic-bound tourist submarine carrying five people could be stuck in the 111-year-old shipwreck lying 12,500 feet at the bottom of the Atlantic Offican, the US Coast Guard said.
Rear Admiral John Mauger, who is overseeing the search and rescue mission for the missing submarine, said it was possible the vessel could be trapped in the Titanic, which lies about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
“We don’t have equipment onsite that can do a survey of the bottom,” Mauger told The Mirror. “There is a lot of debris so locating it will be difficult. Right now, we’re focused on trying to locate it.”
Mauger told reporters on Monday that the Canadian Coast Guard has deployed multiple sonar buoys capable of detecting the submarine even at the bottom of the Atlantic.
He said the location of the sub’s disappearance has proven a difficult search area, but that US and Canadian ships and planes, along with commercial vessels, have been combing the seas since it disappeared Sunday morning.
“We began immediately to mobilize assets to search both the surface of the water, search from the air, and to detect any vessels under the water as well,” Mauger said. “We’ve had a comprehensive search to find these people.”
The search comes as OceanGate Expeditions, the operators of the missing Titan sub, informed the Coast Guard that their vessel only has about four days of life support installed.
“In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator, and so we anticipate that there’s somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours available at this point,” Mauger said Monday.
OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that provides tours for the Titanic wreckage site for as much as $250,000, confirmed that their submarine had gone missing with five crew members aboard.
The crew members have been identified as British billionaire and aviator Hamish Harding, Pakistani energy and tech mogul Shanzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, famed French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush.
The US Coast Guard said that the research vessel Polar Prince had lost contact with Titan after about one hour and 45 minutes after it embarked below the seas in search of the Titanic.
Tourist submarine exploring Titanic wreckage disappears in Atlantic Ocean
What we know
A submarine on a pricey tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean has vanished with likely only four days’ worth of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small submarine began its journey underwater with five passengers Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel that it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
Who is on board?
The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among the five traveling in the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who previously paid for a space ride aboard the Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest voyage to the shipwreck.
What’s next?
“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator, and so we anticipate that there’s somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours available at this point.”
Mauger, first district commander and leader of the search-and-rescue mission, said the US was coordinating with Canada on the operation.
What is it?
Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, the submarine, known as the Titan submersible, holds up to five people. Since 2019, the company has offered tourists the chance to explore the Titanic’s wreckage more than 2 miles below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Canada — at $250,000 per ticket. The Titan usually operates with one chief pilot, three crew members, and then the tourists who pay for the daredevil adventure.
OceanGate noted that because of its location in the middle of the Atlantic, they rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for its communications at sea.
Because it lacks the ability to use GPS underwater when diving, Titan relies on its partner surface ship to guide it to the Titanic via messages.
The ongoing search for the sub is focused on an area about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod at a depth of nearly 13,000 feet — making it the deepest-ever rescue mission in history if successful.
Experts, however, have cautioned that few craft can reach that depth and even if they could, it’s unlikely they could attach to the submersible and tow it up to the ocean’s surface.
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