There is an operation underway to locate a missing submersible with five people on board as he headed for the dilapidated wreck of the Titanic ocean liner.
The US Coast Guard is leading the search for the small vehicle, named Titan, in the northern Atlantic Ocean. It was in this remote region that the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank in 1912. Only 700 of the approximately 2,200 passengers and crew survived.
The voyage was part of OceanGate Expeditions’ third annual voyage to document the liner’s deterioration since 2021. The cruise ship is about 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers) deep.
The underwater exploration company has recorded the deterioration of the ship and the ecosystem that has appeared around it in the last century.
Here’s what we know so far:
When and where did the Titan disappear?
The ship submerged Sunday morning and its support vessel lost contact with it in about an hour and 45 minutes together, according to the Coast Guard.
It was reported lost about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. Johns, Newfoundland, according to the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Titan was leaving from an OceanGate-contracted icebreaker that had previously been used by the Canadian Coast Guard. The ship carries dozens of people and the submersible to the site of the sinking in the North Atlantic, where the Titan often makes several dives.
David Concannon, adviser to OceanGate, told Monday Associated Press that the submersible had oxygen for 96 hours. He said authorities were working to bring a remotely operated vehicle to the site as soon as possible, which can reach a depth of 6 kilometers (about 3.7 miles).
Who was on board?
The Coast Guard said there was a pilot and four “mission specialists” on board. “Mission specialists” are people who pay to join OceanGate expeditions. They take turns operating the sonar equipment and performing other tasks on the five-person submersible.
A first group of tourists in 2021 paid between $100,000 and $150,000 per person to join the trip. OceanGate’s website described a “mission support fee” of $250,000 per person on the 2023 expedition.
One of those specialists was British businessman Hamish Harding, a resident of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, according to Action Aviation, a company of which Harding is president.
Harding is an adventurer who holds three Guinness World Records, including the longest stay deep in the ocean in a manned vehicle. In March 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo descended to the maximum depth in the Mariana Trench. In June 2022 he went into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
Also on board were Shahzada Dawood and her son Suleman, members of one of Pakistan’s best-known families, according to a family statement sent to PA. The firm of the same name has investments throughout the country in agriculture, industry and the health sector. Shahzada Dawood is also on the board of trustees for the SETI Institute, a California-based project that looks for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence.
What kind of submersible is it?
The Titan can descend 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) “with a wide margin of safety,” according to documents filed by the company in April with a federal district court in Virginia overseeing Titanic matters.
In a May 2021 court filing, OceanGate said the Titan had an “unmatched safety feature” that assesses its hull integrity during all dives. By that time, the Titan had made more than 50 test dives, including to the depth equivalent to that of the Titanic, in deep water in the Bahamas and in a pressure chamber, the company said.
During its 2022 expedition, OceanGate reported that the submersible had suffered a battery problem on its first dive and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform, according to a court document filed in November.
What was the Titan’s mission?
The goal of OceanGate expeditions has been to document the deterioration of the Titanic and the underwater ecosystem that often thrives on the wrecks.
What remains of the Titanic is slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria, consuming hundreds of pounds of iron a day. There are holes all over the transept, and the lookout post is already gone. Some have estimated that the ship could disappear in a matter of decades, as the holes grow and entire sections disintegrate.
The company has outfitted the Titan with high-definition cameras and multi-beam sonar equipment. Pinpointing the rate at which the structure is breaking down can help scientists predict the future of other ships wrecked on the high seas, such as those that sank during the world wars. Another point of interest is marine life: there are hundreds of species that have only been identified in that place.
“The ocean is taking it away, and we need to document it before it all disappears or becomes unrecognizable,” he told Associated Press in 2021 the president of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush.
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