According to Deadline news, The U.S. Coast Guard and other officials today said that today that a surveillance plane looking for a missing submersible with five people aboard near the Titanic wreckage has “detected underwater noises in the search area,” described as “banging noises,” about 900 miles off Cape Cod.
“There have been multiple reports of noises and those noises are being analyzed,” said USCG Capt. Jamie Frederick. The noises were detected by a Canadian P-3 search plane today and yesterday. Frederick said recordings of those noises had been analyzed overnight by U.S. Navy experts, but the results were inconclusive.
We need to have hope,” said Frederick, “but I can’t tell you what the noises are.”
He also said that the search area has expanded to two times the size of Connecticut in an area of the ocean where the water column is two-and-one-half miles deep. Frederick said that there are currently “five assets” out searching for the sub. He expects that soon that number will double.
One other piece of good news: While at least one previous sojourn with this submersible was made without supplies of food and water this time, there are “some limited ratios aboard.”
The Titan submersible has been missing since the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince lost contact with it during a dive Sunday morning.
PREVIOUSLY, June 20: United States Coast Guard officials gave an update on the hunt for a missing private submersible 900 miles off Cape Cod. The search area is 7,000 square miles which is, according to one official, “an area larger than the state of Connecticut.” Most important, it is estimated that the five people in the sub have “about 40 hours or breathable air left.”
CBS News’ David Pogue, whose excellent piece last summer on the Titanic sub has gone viral, described the sub’s multifaceted breathing apparatus to News Nation yesterday.
“There are carbon dioxide scrubbers, exactly the same thing you would have in a spacecraft; then there are these emergency scrubbers that look like fly strips they hang from the ceiling and convert C02 to oxygen. And then if those get exhausted there are actual scuba oxygen tanks under the floor panels that they can put on.”
He also described the multiple ways the sub can resurface if there is an emergency.
“This thing has seven different ways of returning to the surface. It has different kinds of ballasts that can let go, it has an inflatable air bladder and has propellers.”
Even if it has returned to the surface, however, the sub has limited communication abilities; It generally communicates with the Polar Prince mothership only by text message. On Pogue’s trip down in the sub, the craft lost touch with the Polar Prince and never found the wreck.
Another issue: opening the hatch.
The crew closes the hatch, from the outside, with 17 bolts. There’s no other way out,” Pogue said in CBS Sunday Morning piece last year. That means there is no way for those inside the sub to open the hatch from the inside to get more air, should they surface.
A potentially bigger issue Pogue also pointed out to News Nation is that, when he went down in the craft, there was no supplemental food or water. Most humans can only survive a few days without water.
PREVIOUSLY on January 19: Hours after the news broke that a submersible seeking to explore the wreck of the Titanic had gone missing the United States Coast Guard, which is leading the search, offered key specifics on the situation.
Per the Coast Guard, there were five crew members in the 21-foot submersible which, it turns out, went missing over 24 hours ago on Sunday morning.
“The 5 person crew submerged Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince lost contact with them approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the vessel’s dive,” reads the statement. A Coast Guard official later specified that the crew consisted of one pilot and four “mission specialists.”
The Coast Guard revealed the search is taking place “900 miles off Cape Cod” with the assistance of P-8 Poseidon aircraft, which has underwater detection capabilities.
The @USCG is searching for a 21-foot submersible from the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince.
The 5 person crew submerged Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince lost contact with them approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the vessel’s dive.
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast)
June 19, 2023
In a briefing Monday afternoon, Coast Guard officials indicated that the search is being conducted in 13,000 feet of water. “It is a remote area and it is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area,” Rear Admiral John W. Mauger told reporters. The search is being conducted both on the surface and in the water column and “will continue through the night.”
The Coast Guard has deployed two C-130 Hercules aircraft in the search, while Canada has deployed one C-130, one P-8 Poseidon aircraft, which can detect craft underwater, and multiple sonar buoys. Mauger indicated that the Polar Prince also has sonar capable of reaching the ocean floor at the search site 13,000-feet below.
PREVIOUSLY at 11 am: A submersible that takes tourists on pricey deep-sea explorations of the Titanic has reportedly gone missing in the area of the wreck, which lies 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in 12,500 feet of water.
The missing craft is believed to be a “truck-sized sub that holds five people and usually dives with a four-day supply of oxygen,” according to the BBC. An extensive search is underway, led by the U.S. Coast Guard.
It is unclear when the vessel went missing or how many people were on board.
The company which operates the tours, OceanGate, describes itself as “a team of explorers, scientists, & filmmakers dedicated to exploring the deep.” It takes passengers on deep-sea submersible tours of the wreck for $250,000 each. Last week, the outfit posted photos what it said were its “Mission 3 and Mission 4” crew.
It's been an incredibly busy two weeks! Thank you to all of our dive teams who've joined us – here's a look at our Mission 3 and Mission 4 crew.
Learn more about the Titanic Expedition: https://t.co/F7OtKI0En7 pic.twitter.com/hRNbwje0CG
— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped)
June 15, 2023
Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families,” reads a statement from OceanGate provided to the New York Times. “We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible.”
Per the Times, which did a piece on OceanGate last summer, “The dives last about eight hours, including the estimated 2.5 hours each way it takes to descend and ascend. Scientists and historians provide context on the trip and some conduct research at the site…The team also documents the wreckage with high-definition cameras to monitor its decay and capture it in detail.”
David Pogue reposted video from a CBS Sunday Morning piece he did while on an OceanGate expedition last summer, which he says “got lost for a few hours” while he was on board and never found the wreck. You can watch it below.
The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 passengers and crew. The wreckage was found in 1985, and inspired diver James Cameron to make Titanic in 1997. The film went on to win 11 Oscars and gross well over $2 billion worldwide.
“I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” Cameron told Playboy in 2009. “The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right. When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an IMAX movie, I said, ‘I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing.’ I loved that first taste, and I wanted more.”
