The US and Canadian Coast Guards continued, Tuesday, June 20, search operations for the Titan, a small tourist submarine missing in the Atlantic Ocean, off North America, while engaged in an expedition to the sinking area of the Titanic with five people on board: an American, a Briton, two Pakistanis and French aquanaut Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a wreck specialist.
So far, the search for him has “produced no results,” the U.S. Coast Guard said in the early evening, adding that there are “approximately 40 hours” of oxygen remaining in the missing submersible.
The French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) diverted its ship Atalante, equipped with a deep-sea robot, to the site in the North Atlantic where the submarine disappeared, the Secretary of State for the Sea announced on Tuesday. The Atalante, on a mission, should arrive in the area on Wednesday around 8 p.m. (Newfoundland time), before operators dispatched from Toulon make the robot dive towards the sea. wreck, which is almost four thousand meters deep. The missing submarine, Titan, began its dive on Sunday with a crew of five and a range of ninety-six hours.
Authorities were warned on Sunday by the craft’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions, a private company operating the submersible, that it had disappeared off the coast of Canada during an organized trip to approach the wreck of the Titanic. “The crew of the Polar-Prince [a company boat] lost contact with them approximately one hour and forty-five minutes into the dive,” a spokesman for the guards said Monday evening. – American coasts. OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement Monday that it is “exploring and mobilizing all options” to bring the crew back safely.
Rear Admiral John Mauger, head of the United States Coast Guard, explained Monday during a press conference that three American and two Canadian planes were mobilized to find the submarine. The search for the submersible, which until now has focused on the surface of the ocean, is now also taking place underwater, he announced on ABC News’ “Good Morning America” Tuesday.
A Canadian P-3 aircraft also dropped sonobuoys in the area where the Titanic sank in an attempt to record any sounds produced by the Titan, which is about 6.50 meters tall. Boats and planes searching for the submersible have now surveyed 13,000 square kilometers, Rear Admiral Mauger added. The search area is located more than 1,450 kilometers from the Massachusetts state coast – and at a depth of almost four kilometers.
Time is now a critical factor in finding the passengers of the submarine. “It’s a remote area, and it’s complicated to conduct research in such an area,” added John Mauger. Frank Owen, a former submarine officer told the BBC that the challenge for those on board is to keep their cool and not consume too much oxygen.
US President Joe Biden wants the Coast Guard, a body of the armed forces, to continue their search and the Navy can be mobilized if necessary, assured the spokesman of the National Security Council of the White House, John Kirby .
The wreck of the Titanic, of which 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers perished in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg, lies 3,810 meters (12,500 feet) at the bottom of the Atlantic, nearly 600 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. OceanGate Expeditions charges its customers $250,000 (230,000 euros) for a place on board its submarine and for eight days to see the famous wreck.
This OceanGate expedition was the third organized to the site of the sunken transatlantic liner to document its deterioration and its underwater life. The trip was scheduled to depart in early May from St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, and complete in late June, according to a court document filed by the company in April with the U.S. District Court in Virginia which presides over the Titanic business.
The company uses the Polar-Prince, an icebreaker previously operated by the Canadian Coast Guard, to ferry dozens of people and the submersible to the wreck site. The submersible can accommodate five people, according to the company, including a pilot, three paying passengers and an “expert”.
Among the passengers is wealthy British businessman, aviator and space tourist Hamish Harding, 58, CEO of Action Aviation, the Dubai-based private jet sales company confirmed in a statement on Tuesday. “The submarine’s crew is made up of some legendary explorers, some of whom have completed more than thirty dives on the Titanic since the 1980s,” Hamish wrote on his Instagram account on Saturday announcing his participation in the voyage.
He added that the French Titanic specialist, aquanaut Paul-Henri Nargeolet, was also part of the expedition, which his family confirmed on BFM-TV. Originally from Haute-Savoie and now 77 years old, this seabed explorer spent the first part of his career as a naval officer. Commander of the group of clearance divers in Cherbourg (Manche, north-west of France), he then became a submarine pilot in the Undersea Intervention Group, part of the French Navy. From there he moved on to maritime archeology, with the excavation of several wrecks, within the association of the Naval Archeology Research Group. In 1986, he became responsible for Ifremer’s deep intervention submarines. Since 2007, he has been director of the research program for the company RMS Titanic/Phoenix International, which owns the wreck. The former clearance diver has worked on dozens of wreckage recovery operations, including those of AF447, the Air France Rio-Paris flight that fell off Brazil in 2009.
According to the BBC, citing a statement from his family, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, vice-chairman of conglomerate Engro and administrator of the SETI Institute, and his son Suleman, 19, are also at edge.
Finally, the company OceanGate Expeditions, organizer of the trip and whose American boss, Stockton Rush, is also on board, assured “explore and mobilize all options to bring the crew back safely”.
As these efforts gain momentum, US media on Tuesday reported an old complaint from 2018, also seen by AFP, showing that a former executive of the company OceanGate Expeditions, David Lochridge, had been fired after raising serious doubts about the safety of the submarine.
American screenwriter Mike Reiss, producer of the famous series “The Simpsons”, has already gone three times with OceanGate Expeditions, including once in 2022 aboard the same submersible as the one that disappeared, he told the BBC on Monday. . A totally confusing experience, because “you almost always lose communication and find yourself at the mercy of the elements and that kind of stuff.”
According to him, everyone is fully aware of the dangers involved: “You have to sign a waiver before you get on and death is mentioned three times on page one. It’s not a coach vacation, it can go wrong.”
Without having studied the craft itself, Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, raised two possible theories based on images of the device published by the press. He believes that if he had an electrical or communications problem, he could have been brought to the surface, floating “waiting to be found”. “Another scenario is that the hull has been compromised,” and there has been a leak. “So the prognosis is not good,” he added. And “very few vessels can go” to the depth it might have sunk, he said.
SkyNew explains for its part that in normal times, the submarine emits a signal every fifteen minutes to signal that it is safe. But the British channel understands that these signals have ceased.
CBS reporter David Pogue, who traveled aboard the submersible last year, told the BBC that the passengers were locked inside the main capsule, which was locked with bolts and could not get out on their own. On Twitter, he recalled that the craft “got lost for a few hours last summer when I was on board.”