The search for the submersible, which disappeared in the North Atlantic last Sunday during an expedition to see the remains of the Titanic, reached the critical limit of 96 hours in total this Thursday, June 22, with which the ship has oxygen supplies. In the final stretch, to try to find the five occupants of the submarine alive, teams from the United Kingdom and France have joined the efforts led by the authorities of the United States and Canada.
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Hopes are low, but the efforts of the search teams are intense to try to find to the Titan tourist submarine, from the OceanGate Expeditions company, which disappeared on Sunday June 18 with five people on board.
By sea and air, operations by the United States Coast Guard, the Canadian Armed Forces and vessels from the United Kingdom and France have increased, which joined the operation in the North Atlantic in the last 24 hours.
According to the specifications of OceanGates Expeditions, the manufacturer of the ship designed to reach the depths of the sea and explore the remains of the Titanic, the submersible has a total of 96 hours of oxygen supplies, which would run out on Thursday morning. June 22, local time.
That established the limit mark between 6 am and 8 am local time, the US Coast Guard and the company in charge of the expedition confirmed.
However, experts stressed that this is an imprecise estimate and could be extended if passengers have taken steps to conserve breathable air. It is also unknown if the people on board survived after the submarine disappeared four days ago.
Frank Owen, a submarine search and rescue expert, noted that estimating oxygen supplies is a useful “target” for searchers, but it is only based on a “nominal amount of consumption.”
Owen also noted that the diver aboard the Titan would likely be advising passengers to “do whatever it takes to lower your metabolic levels so you can really extend this.”
United Kingdom and France join the search efforts
The operations have intensified at a time when the clock ticked down to find the missing with possible oxygen supplies, but also after Tuesday night a plane from the Canadian teams detected Underwater “thumping sounds” at 30-minute intervals in scanning area.
However, and with a tracking area as wide as the state of Connecticut or half the size of Belgium, it has not been possible to find the location of the ship.
In the midst of this panorama, the United Kingdom and France joined the intense efforts of the authorities of the United States and Canada.
ORA British Navy submarine joined the operation and a plane carrying specialized equipment for this type of operation is also scheduled to arrive in the next few hours, a spokesman for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed Thursday.
Meanwhile, France announced a day earlier that it had sent a French research ship, carrying its own submersible diving robot and It can go down to 6,000 meters.
Finding the submersible is a full-blown challenge. Few are the boats with the capacity to reach the maximum depth of the ocean, where the Titan could be found. Experts stress that this is an area of planet Earth about which there are enormous unknowns.
“We know more about the lunar surface than we do about the ocean floor, simply because we haven’t studied it,” said Jamie Pringle, a forensic geoscientist at Keele University in the UK.
Experts pointed to safety concerns about the submarine that disappeared in 2018
The Reuters news agency reported that a former employee and members of a trade group raised concerns about the design of the Titan ship during its development.
On January 18, 2018, OceanGate employee David Lochridge sent company leadership an engineering report criticizing OceanGate’s research and development process for the Titan, according to lawsuits Lochridge and OceanGate filed. each other that year.
In particular, Lochridge was concerned with the hull design and its ability to withstand the intense pressures of deep water.
The company then called a meeting to discuss Lochridge’s concerns, according to the lawsuits. At the end of the meeting, Lochridge stated that he could not accept OceanGate’s design decisions and that he would not authorize any manned voyages without further evidence, but the man was later fired.
OceanGate filed a lawsuit against Lochridge in June and July 2018 alleging that it had discussed confidential information with at least two other people.
For its part, Lochridge countersued in August 2018, denying the allegations and assuring that OceanGate’s lawsuit was an effort to discourage “whistleblowers from raising quality control issues and safety concerns that threaten the safety of innocent passengers.”
For now, planes and boats in the area of the disappearance continue to work in the hope that the underwater sounds they previously detected could help narrow the search area in the urgent international mission.
With Reuters and AP
