2023-06-22 18:08:00
United States | As yet unidentified “field of wreckage” near the Titanic was found Thursday by teams desperately searching for the tourist submersible that disappeared Sunday, the US Coast Guard said.
“Unified command experts are evaluating the information,” the coastal service said in a tweet.
The wreckage was found in the “search area of a remotely operated vehicle, ROV, near the Titanic,” although the Coast Guard did not immediately provide further details. At 19:00 GMT he plans to offer a press conference in Boston, the center of operations for this operation that involves several countries.
The search, in which ships, robots and planes participate, had entered a critical phase this Thursday, since the 96 hours of emergency oxygen available to the Titan submersible from the private company OceanGate Expeditions would have run out at 11:08 GMT of this Thursday.
However, rescuers maintain hopes of finding the passengers alive.
“We continue to see in particularly complex cases that people’s will to live also has to be taken into account,” US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told NBC’s Today show shortly before the new find.
“Therefore, we continue to search and proceed with the rescue efforts,” it added.
The Polar Prince mother ship, of the Canadian company Horizon Maritime, lost all contact with the submersible less than two hours after starting a dive that should have lasted about seven hours, to visit the remains of the mythical ocean liner Titanic, which lies almost 4,000 meters deep and 600 km from the mainland, in Newfoundland.
On board were the British millionaire Hamish Harding, president of the Action Aviation company; the Pakistani Shahzada Dawood, vice president of Engro, and his son Suleman -both also with British nationality-; the expert French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operates the submersible, and which charged $250,000 per tourist.
large amounts of equipment
The detection of noises underwater in the search area in recent days revived the hope of finding the submersible and focused the search for ships and planes on an area of some 20,000 km2, almost the size of El Salvador.
The location of the search “makes the rapid mobilization of large amounts of equipment exceptionally difficult,” Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick acknowledged yesterday.
In total, a dozen ships, with the help of remote control robots (ROVs), are part of the international device that is participating in the search for the submersible.
Another robot from the deep-sea mapping company Magellan was scheduled to arrive from Great Britain on Thursday afternoon to join in combing the seabed.
In recent days, a report about the ship’s possible security deficiencies has surfaced.
The former director of marine operations for OceanGate Expeditions, the manufacturing company, David Lochridge, fired for having questioned the safety of the Titan, mentioned in a legal complaint the “unproven and experimental design” of the submersible.
According to Lochridge, a porthole on the front of the device was designed to resist pressure at a depth of 1,300 meters, and not at 4,000 meters.
According to Professor of Marine Engineering at University College London, Alistair Greig, the Titan could have suffered an electrical or communications problem, which would not have prevented it from rising to the surface, or that the hull was damaged, thus raising hopes. to find the five passengers alive they would dissipate.
“Scary” Journey
Tom Zaller told AFP his experience 23 years ago on a dive similar to the one on Sunday to visit the most famous shipwreck in history.
“As you go lower and lower, it gets darker” and “colder,” he said. Upon viewing the video he recorded of himself in the deep sea, he saw that he was “utterly terrified.”
“I was in that submersible for twelve hours with everything going according to plan,” he commented, but “I can’t even imagine” what it’s like to be locked up in a cabin for several days where there is no space to move or go to the bathroom.
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