Underwater noises have been detected by a Canadian aircraft in the search area for the missing submersible, according to the US Coast Guard. Searches yielded negative results but will continue. The data has been shared with the US Navy experts for further analysis, the Coast Guard said.
Search crews have heard banging sounds at 30-minute intervals, according to US media. CNN and Rolling Stone cited internal government memos saying banging had been detected, and reported that after additional devices were deployed four hours later, noises were still heard. The memos did not clarify when on Tuesday the banging was heard, or for how long.
The Explorers Club, of which two passengers in the missing sub are members, says there is “cause for hope” based on field data, asserting that “likely signs of life have been detected at the site”.
The submersible’s hatch appears to be bolted from the outside. So even if the sub has surfaced and is spotted by search operations, the danger is not over, as the crew inside would still need to rely on emergency oxygen to breathe until the hatch is opened by rescue teams.
The Titan crew is estimated to be down to about 30 hours of breathable air. Ten hours ago, Coast Guard officials said the crew of the missing submersible had about 40 hours of breathable air left.
So far, more than 25,900 square kilometres of sea has been searched by aircraft for the missing vessel – part of a unified command of aircraft and ships of the US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expedition.
“There are significant risks associated with deploying vehicles at these depths,” Prof Stefan Williams, University of Sydney director digital sciences initiative, tells the Guardian of the missing submersible.
It is relatively recently that robotic vehicles have been considered and used for deep sea tourism.
Williams points to the 1970s as the start of “these sorts of vehicles” being used to support scientific research. “They have made some important contributions to our understanding of the deep sea.”
Uncrewed robotic vehicles are used routinely for supporting deep sea research as well as in the offshore industry, with a relatively limited number of crewed vessels used for scientific research, Williams says.
Crewed vessels allows experiencing environments firsthand, but the pressured involved limits viewpoints – crewed vessels have to rely on cameras and sensors to survey the environment.
Even though advances in communication systems, navigation instruments, engineering design tools and new materials have contributed to innovation in the design of these platforms, Williams says operating in depths of 4000m and beyond remains a challenge – especially if the expedition is for tourism:
The move into deep sea tourism may introduce new risks. There may be more commercial pressure to be turning the vehicles around quickly in preparation for dives and new designs need extensive testing to ensure that they are meeting their design specifications and performance requirements.
Underwater noises have been detected by a Canadian aircraft in the search area for the missing submersible, according to the US Coast Guard. Searches yielded negative results but will continue. The data has been shared with the US Navy experts for further analysis, the Coast Guard said.
Search crews have heard banging sounds at 30-minute intervals, according to US media. CNN and Rolling Stone cited internal government memos saying banging had been detected, and reported that after additional devices were deployed four hours later, noises were still heard. The memos did not clarify when on Tuesday the banging was heard, or for how long.
The Explorers Club, of which two passengers in the missing sub are members, says there is “cause for hope” based on field data, asserting that “likely signs of life have been detected at the site”.
The submersible’s hatch appears to be bolted from the outside. So even if the sub has surfaced and is spotted by search operations, the danger is not over, as the crew inside would still need to rely on emergency oxygen to breathe until the hatch is opened by rescue teams.
The Titan crew is estimated to be down to about 30 hours of breathable air. Ten hours ago, Coast Guard officials said the crew of the missing submersible had about 40 hours of breathable air left.
So far, more than 25,900 square kilometres of sea has been searched by aircraft for the missing vessel – part of a unified command of aircraft and ships of the US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expedition.
US Coast Guard captain Jamie Frederick has told reporters that US and Canadian aircraft have searched more than 25,900 square kilometres of sea for the submersible vessel Titan – which was carrying five people when it went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck on Sunday.
The Titanic shipwreck lies 1,450 km east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and 644 km south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Canada’s Polar Prince ship has been conducting surface searches alongside a Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, Associated Press reports. The Canadian military has dropped sonar buoys to listen for any possible sounds from the Titan. An underwater robot is also searching in the vicinity of the Titanic.
Two US Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft have been conducting overflights. To aid the search, three C-17s from US Air Mobility Command have moved another commercial company’s submersible and support equipment from Buffalo to St. John’s.
A Royal Canadian Navy ship carrying a medical team specialising in dive medicine and a six-person mobile hyperbaric recompression chamber was also en route today.
The New York based Explorers Club has told the Guardian that they are “waiting for updates from the Coast Guard” before commenting further on reports that noises were detected in the search area.
In an earlier statement, the club said that there was cause for hope:
“Based on data from the field – we understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site,” the club’s president, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, said in a statement released late on Tuesday.
Billionaire Hamish Harding and dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet who are among the missing passengers on the Titan submersible are both members of the Explorers Club.
The underwater noises detected by a Canadian aircraft have been shared with US Navy experts for analysis, US Coast Guard’s Northeast District tweets:
Additionally, the data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our U.S. Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans. 2/2 #Titanic
Underwater noises have been detected by a Canadian aircraft in the search area for the missing submersible, the US Coast Guard’s Northeast District has announced.
Searches yielded negative results but will continue.
Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue. 1/2
Hope that the missing submersible will be found on the ocean’s surface decreases with each passing day, Prof Stefan Williams, University of Sydney director digital sciences initiative, tells the Guardian.
The best case scenario is that the sub has had a malfunction of its communication and tracking equipment and has made its way back to the surface, he says.
If it is floating on the surface, and the aerial survey and ships in the vicinity can find it in the next day or so, then they would seek to open the sub and free the crew.
However, Williams says this outcome is not guaranteed.
Given that it is now well beyond the sub’s intended dive time and that searches have been underway for several days, this scenario is looking increasingly unlikely.
There is still some hope that the submersible will be found on the surface, but it decreases with each passing day.
A lack of evidence of the sub on the surface means it is possible that it has suffered a catastrophic failure of one of its systems, Williams says.
“This might include the complete failure of the pressure vessel housing the crew or potentially some other failure of the submersible’s systems which has prevented them from surfacing.”
Extreme medicine expert Dr Glenn Singleman told the Guardian about the challenges of submarine expeditions:
All of these extreme environments have incredible risk.
The pressure down at the Titanic is like having a car standing on your wrist, or something like that.
Singleman has been the expedition physician on several deep-sea exploration projects, including for James Cameron’s Last Mysteries of the Titanic live documentary in 2005, Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger expedition to reach the deepest-known point on Earth in 2012, and Victor Vescovo’s Five Deeps expedition.
Singleman said the closed-loop environment inside a deep-sea submarine posed specific technical challenges:
You’ve got to control your oxygen flow and you’ve got to remove carbon dioxide and you’ve got to remove water vapour. They’re the three things about the environment internally that you’ve got to control. The fourth thing is temperature … the water temperature down there is 0 to 1C.
All submarines and submersibles have to do that … The difference is the pressure of the water around. Most navy submarines can go to about 900m maximum before they run the risk of imploding, but these [deep-sea] vehicles are going 4, 5, 6km.
Singleman has previously visited the Titanic wreck, on a vessel built and operated by the Russian Academy of Sciences:
When I went down to the Titanic myself I was visitor 428 on that particular vehicle. That’s a signal of how reliable and how safe, how tested that particular program was … unfortunately [it] is no longer in operation.
A visual depiction of the search patterns used during the rescue operation for the missing submersible Titan has been made available by the US Coast Guard.
US Coast Guard continues to search for missing submersible Photograph: PETTY OFFICER 3RD CLASS BRIANA CARTER/EPA
As of Tuesday morning, a total of 10,000 square miles have been searched, and the US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expeditions have established a unified command to continue its search and rescue response.
'Banging sounds' heard in search zone - US reports say
US media is reporting that search crews have heard banging sounds at 30-minute intervals.
Rolling Stone were first to report the news on Tuesday night, followed by CNN. Both cited internal government memos, and reported that after additional sonar devices were deployed four hours later, banging was still heard.
The Guardian has not been able to confirm the reports.
The memo does not clarify when on Tuesday the banging was heard, or for how long.
A later update, cited by CNN, sent that night described more sounds:
Additional acoustic feedback was heard and will assist in vectoring surface assets and also indicating continued hope of survivors.
OceanGate warned of possible 'catastrophic' problems
On Tuesday, the New York Times published a letter written in 2018 by industry leaders in the submersible vessel field, warning Stockton Rush of possible “catastrophic” problems with Titan’s development. Rush is creator of Titan, CEO of OceanGate, and one of the five people on the missing vessel.
The Marine Technology Society – an industry group made up of “ocean engineers, technologists, policymakers, and educators” – expressed “concern regarding the development of Titan and the planned Titanic Expeditions”.
They warned against the “current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate.”
At issue was whether or not the Titan vessel would be independently assessed by industry regulators or risk assessors.
In the post, the company acknowledges that classing assures “vessels are designed, constructed and inspected to accepted standards,” but do little to “weed out subpar vessel operators”.
The company was also concerned that the classing process could slow down development and act as a drag on innovation.
Read the full story from Jonathan Yerushalmy here:
The Explorers Club is a multidisciplinary professional society that works to promote scientific exploration and field study.
The club was founded in New York City in 1904, and is now international. Its chapters host lectures and seminars, award field-research grants to students, publish newsletters and organise expeditions, field trips and educational events.
The club celebrates five notable times its members completed a “famous first” achievement – including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the surface of the moon in 1969.
Passenger on the missing Titan sub Hamish Harding was a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Explorers Club.
In a statement released on June 19, Garriott said “when I saw Hamish last week … his excitement about this expedition was palpable. I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site”.
The Explorers Club is a multidisciplinary society based in New York dedicated to field research, scientific exploration and resource conservation.
The Guardian cannot verify the Explorers Club’s claim.
