“We were afraid of this”: concerns about the bathyscaphe missing from the Titanic are named

Member of the first expedition to search for the wreck of the Titanic, says the community of explorers of the deep sea was left “in pieces”

“This is the day we’ve been dreading for a long, long time – when you lose a submarine in really deep water,” Joe McInnis, a member of the first expedition to locate the Titanic wreck in 1985, told The Guardian. “It doesn’t look very good.”

Canadian and US authorities deployed specialized aircraft and ships to search for five people aboard the 6.4-meter vessel, which lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after a scheduled dive on Sunday, almost 400 miles (640 km) off the coast of Newfoundland. The Guardian.

The American company OceanGate Expeditions, which owns the submersible, said it was “exploring all options” for the safe return of the crew.

OceanGate organizes trips that combine commercial tourism with scientific exploration to the final resting place of the ill-fated ocean liner that struck an iceberg in 1912 and sank, killing more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew.

On deep-sea expeditions, crews often worry about the trinity of fire, hull failure, or entanglement, according to Joe McInnis.

According to The Guardian, MacInnis is an experienced deep sea explorer who made 17 trips to the famous wreck with a Russian crew as part of the filming of the Titanic documentary in 1992.

He is also a close friend of film director James Cameron, whom he introduced to Russian submarine pilots. “The next thing you know is that Jim hires them and does all his diving on the Titanic before making his big movie,” he said, referring to the 1997 mega-blockbuster Titanic, which was directed by Cameron.

During his second expedition to the Titanic, McInnis and his crew were briefly stranded on part of the wreck. The second submarine was sent to reconnoiter, and the two of them found a way to carefully free the ship. On the same voyage, the crew lost radio contact after the submarine went behind the Titanic’s propellers to film footage for a documentary.

“I will tell you that for a while we puzzled and hoped that everything was in order. As soon as they returned from under the stern, we restored radio contact. And it was a big, very big relief, ”recalls the expedition member.

While McInnis’ teams momentarily lost contact, by Monday evening the Titan had been out of touch for over 30 hours. “This is of great concern, especially as time goes on,” the veteran researcher said.

McInnis said that if the submersible is deep in the ocean, any recovery would be “incredibly costly.”

“In any accident, you really need an analysis of what went wrong. And I suspect there will be a lot of controversy in this case, and [в случае потери] we will probably see an attempt to bring it back if they can.”

On Monday, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard told reporters that the crews are “doing their best” to find the submersible.

The Coast Guard relies on aircraft, some of which have underwater detection capabilities. But officials have acknowledged that for now, they have the ability to search by sounds only.

Officials are hopeful that the ship eventually surfaced somehow and is drifting somewhere in the North Atlantic awaiting rescue.

“We’ve been afraid of this for a long time,” McInnis said, adding that the news shocked the tight-knit community of scientists and explorers who have spent most of their lives sinking ever deeper into the darkness of the sea.

“But that is the reality of the ocean, especially in its deeper waters. It really is a place of burning fear. And it is a place of elusive beauty,” he said.

Search and rescue teams race to find a tourist submersible that went missing with five people on board while diving to investigate the Titanic wreck.

According to the US Coast Guard, contact with the Titan submersible was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes after it sank Sunday afternoon. Here’s what we know about the ship and what may have happened.

The Titan is a research submersible that can carry five people, usually a pilot and four “mission specialists,” which may include archaeologists, marine biologists, or anyone who can afford an expensive trip as a tourist.

Constructed of “titanium and filament-wound carbon fibre”, the 6.7-meter vessel weighs 10,432 kg, the equivalent of about six medium-sized cars, and is capable of diving to depths of up to 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) “with a comfortable margin of safety.” according to the operator OceanGate.

It uses four electric motors to propel itself and is equipped with a battery of cameras, lights and scanners to study its environment. OceanGate claims that the Titan’s viewscreen is “the largest of any deep-sea submersible” and that its technology provides “an unrivaled view” of the ocean’s depths. It uses Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite technology to communicate, though it’s not clear if that was the reason for the loss of contact.

OceanGate tweeted last week: “With no cell towers in the middle of the ocean, we rely on @Starlink to provide the connectivity we need throughout the Titanic 2023 mission.”

According to David Concannon, an adviser to tour operator OceanGate, the unit has 96 hours of oxygen in cylinders, around 6 am Sunday local time, which would theoretically last until Thursday morning. However, this limitation will be affected by the breathing rate of those inside the vessel, especially if there are tourists on board with limited diving experience.

It’s too early to tell what happened, but experts have suggested some of the most likely scenarios, from getting entangled in the wreckage of the Titanic to a power failure or malfunction in the submarine’s communications system.

The wreck of the Titanic, which lies about 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) deep on the ocean floor, is surrounded by debris left over from a disaster more than a century old.

“Parts of it are scattered all over the place. It’s dangerous,” said Frank Owen, a retired Royal Australian Navy officer and director of the Submarine Rescue Project.

Contact with the sub was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes after the Titan’s dive, suggesting the crew may have been close to the surface or at the bottom, Owen says. The Titan’s top speed is three knots, but the deeper it goes, the slower it will move.

In the event of entanglement, power or communications outages, the Titan will be equipped with drop weights that can be released in an emergency, creating enough buoyancy to lift it to the surface. The Titan is equipped with a variety of signals, lights, reflectors and other equipment that it can use once on the surface to draw attention.

The other scenario is that there has been a pressure vessel leak, in which case the prognosis is poor, warns Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London.

“If it has sunk to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, the options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible may still be intact if it is off the continental shelf, very few vessels can get to that depth, and certainly not divers.”

Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, told Sky News that the seabed rescue is a “very complex operation”: “The actual nature of the seabed is very undulating. The Titanic itself lies in a trench. There is a lot of garbage around. So trying to discriminate, particularly with sonar, and targeting the area you want to search with another submersible is going to be really, really hard.”

American and Canadian planes are combing the area, as well as capital ships, but crews don’t know if the vessel has surfaced, meaning they have to comb both the surface and the ocean depths, said Rear Admiral John Mauger, commander of the US Coast Guard’s First District. overseeing the search and rescue operation.

Concannon said officials are working to get a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) capable of diving to depths of up to 6,000 meters to the site as soon as possible.

These unmanned aerial vehicles are dropped over the side of the vessel, to which they are connected by an “umbilical cord” that allows the pilot to control the engines, as well as transmit real-time data from sonar and cameras.

However, the amount of wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor means it can take time to distinguish between what is the wreckage of the liner that sank in 1912 and what is the Titan. Search teams at least have a starting point; the vessel’s position would be tracked until contact was lost.

The company’s managing director, Mark Butler, told the AP: “We still have plenty of time to facilitate the rescue mission, we have survival equipment on board in this case,” Butler says. “We all hope and pray that they return safe and sound.”

Read also: Oxygen on the bathyscaphe missing from the Titanic is enough for 96 hours: search difficulties