ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (WAVY/AP) – A Elizabeth City Coast Guard crew has assisted in the search for the missing submersible that is carrying five people to document the wreckage of the Titanic.
The vessel was reported overdue Sunday night about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Coast Guard says the craft submerged Sunday morning, and its support vessel, the Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later.
At this point, despite a massive rescue effort, the outlook is bleak for the passengers of the Titan.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who, according to the company, was serving as a member of the crew, told The Associated Press in June 2021 that the Titan’s technology was “very cutting edge” and was developed with the help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers.
“This is the only submersible – crewed submersible – that’s made of carbon fiber and titanium,” Rush said, calling it the “largest carbon fiber structure that we know of,” with 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and 3.25-inch-thick titanium.
C-130s from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City are assisting in the search. On Wednesday, the Coast Guard tweeted that a Elizabeth City HC-130 fixed wing aircraft conducted a search spanning 879 miles. Elizabeth City crews also completed two searches Monday evening for the missing vessel.
As an international fleet of surveillance vessels and aircraft forges ahead with ongoing search and rescue efforts, each passing second makes it less likely that the passengers on the Titan will be found alive as their oxygen supply is expected to run out by Thursday morning.
Even if the Titan is located in the North Atlantic, it could be nearly impossible to reach if it is stuck on the ocean floor at roughly 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) near the Titanic’s wreckage.
David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate, said the submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply starting at roughly 6 a.m. Sunday.
Experts said the rescuers face steep challenges.
Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles typically have a drop weight, which is “a mass they can release in the case of an emergency to bring them up to the surface using buoyancy.”
“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.
Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, he said.
“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”
Even if they could go that deep, he doubts rescuers could attach to the submersible.
The five people on board are pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company leading the expedition; British adventurer Hamish Harding; Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, a father and son from a prominent Pakistani family; and French undersea explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
