Oxygen – and time – may have run out in the rescue effort for five people aboard the submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic on a tour to the Titanic wreckage site.
The Titan sub was estimated Tuesday by U.S. Coast Guard officials to have about 40 hours of oxygen left – and that length of time passed as of about 5 a.m. ET Thursday. An updated prediction by the U.S. Coast Guard Wednesday said the Titan was likely to run out of oxygen at around 7 a.m. ET Thursday.
While the estimates for remaining oxygen were only approximations and could vary by a few hours or so, officials had for days stressed the dire nature of finding the sub soon.
“We have to retain hope as part of what we are doing as a human community to find the explorers and bring them to safety,” Joyce Murray, Canada’s minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, said Wednesday.
What happens if rescue teams find the Titan?
Search crews Wednesday expanded the surface area in the search and rescue mission to about twice the size of Connecticut and 2.5 miles deep.
Nikolas Xiros, professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of New Orleans, told USA TODAY the vessel has likely lost power and the temperatures at that depth could be barely above freezing.
“If a lack of oxygen doesn’t get them,” Xiros said, “what’s going to get them is going to be hypothermia.”
The 22-foot, carbon-fiber submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply when it departed on its journey at about 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate Expeditions, the deep-sea exploration company that owns the vessel.
The small craft, owned by undersea exploration company OceanGate Expeditions, has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021. The Titan was launched from an icebreaker that was hired by OceanGate and formerly operated by the Canadian Coast Guard. The ship has ferried dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site, where the Titan has made multiple dives.
Underwater noises detected in the area of the Titanic wreck on Wednesday gave hope to crews that the Titan was trying to signal for help.
But recovery of the vessel will be difficult as crews will have to identify its exact location and then bring it to the surface if it is still intact. Even if there are survivors, reaching the Titan with rescue equipment is another complication, and it will likely take hours to bring it to the surface.
Dangerous conditions, difficult recovery in ocean depths
Experts said the five passengers may be facing increasingly dangerous conditions that only worsen with each passing hour.
Inadequate oxygen levels will cause organ failure and loss of consciousness, according to Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association.
Even if no survivors are found because of oxygen depletion, experts said recovery of the vessel will be difficult.
Lawrence Brennan, a professor at Fordham University’s School of Law and retired Navy captain, said if the Titan is at the bottom like the Titanic, there is currently no equipment available to retrieve the debris.
Ret. Navy Capt. David Marquet, a former submarine captain, told CNN the passengers are likely very uncomfortable.
“They’re freezing cold,” he predicted. “The water entirely surrounding the ship is at freezing or slightly below. When they exhale, their breath condenses. There’s frost on the inside of the parts of the submarine. They’re all huddled together trying to conserve their body heat. They’re running low on oxygen and they’re exhaling carbon dioxide.”
Who is on the passenger list of the missing submersible?
The five people on the submersible are:
- Stockton Rush, 61, CEO of OceanGate, who co-founded the company in 2009.
- Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 73, a French maritime explorer and director of the Underwater Research Program at Premier Exhibitions, RMS Titanic Inc., the only company with exclusive rights to recover the artifacts from the Titanic wreck.
- Hamish Harding, 58, a British explorer, private jet dealer and chairman of Action Aviation, a global sales company in business aviation.
- Shahzada Dawood, 48, a member of one of Pakistan’s most prominent families.
- Suleman Dawood, son of Shahzada Dawood.
Where else could the Titan be?
Another possibility is that the Titan will be found on the surface due to its built-in safety system that helps the vessel rise to the surface in emergency situations. The system was designed to function even if those onboard are unconscious.
The Titan’s hatch cannot be unlocked from the inside, “so they will have to open the hatch and the bolts from the outside and rescue the people in there. That’s the best scenario, and I’m not sure it’s likely,” Brennan said.
Yet another scenario is that the vessel had a hull breach and imploded instantly due to the heavy pressure in the deep ocean.
CBS News journalist David Pogue said the Titan’s communications systems stopped working about an hour and 45 minutes after it submerged Sunday.
“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship developed a hull breach and it imploded instantly. Both of those are devastatingly hopeless,” Pogue told the Canadian CBC network Tuesday.
Contributing: Jorge L. Ortiz, Jeanine Santucci, Claire Thornton and Grace Hauck, USA TODAY; The Associated Press
