New signs of hope emerged for rescuers searching for the submersible named Titan that was lost at the site of the wreck of the Titanic Sunday morning. According to an internal U.S. government memo, sonar picked up banging sounds during the search yesterday, which were heard every 30 minutes. The noises were detected by a Canadian P-3 aircraft, which led to search teams relocating to that area to try to find where they were coming from. As of 1:30 a.m. Eastern this morning, those “searches have yielded negative results.”
The five people on board the sub include Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of OceanGate, the company leading the trip. The other four passengers are British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Other details about the sub and the search:
- When the Titan launched on Sunday morning, it had enough oxygen to last an estimated 96 hours. That would leave roughly a day’s worth of air for the five people aboard at this point.
- Explorers Club President Richard Garriott de Cayeux said the group is working to get approval for the deep-sea mapping company Magellan to assist in the search. Magellan is best-known for their high-resolution images of the Titanic. The biggest challenge to Magellan’s involvement isn’t approval, though; the company said yesterday they needed a plane that could transport their equipment from the UK to Canada.
- The U.S. Navy is sending a “Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System” to assist in the rescue operations. It has special equipment that allow it to lift small vessels like Titan and bring them to the surface.
- The New York Times reported yesterday that the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society sent a letter to Stockton Rush in 2018 saying the “current ‘experimental’ approach” being used by OceanGate could “result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry.”
Source: CNN
Photo: Getty Images