Coverage on this live blog has ended. Please click here for the latest updates.
The frantic search to find the missing Titanic tourist submersible expanded "exponentially" Wednesday as crews canvassed a surface area twice the size of Connecticut and 2.5 miles deep.
The search is focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected “underwater noises” Tuesday and, again, Wednesday.
The sounds prompted redirected searches by remotely operated vehicles, the U.S. Coast Guard said early Wednesday, noting that the effort had so far "yielded negative results."
The five people on board the vessel, which vanished during a mission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, had less than 40 hours of oxygen supply left Tuesday afternoon, a Coast Guard official said, making the bid to find the vessel a race against time.
Those on the missing vessel, named Titan, have been identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission; British billionaire Hamish Harding, the owner of Action Aviation; French dive expert Paul Henry Nargeolet; and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
Coverage on this live blog has ended. Please click here for the latest updates.
What to know about the missing sub
- The submersible, named Titan, disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, which is 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
- The vessel had up to a 96-hour oxygen supply, and the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday it predicts the oxygen supply on the Titan will run out at 7:08 a.m. ET Thursday.
- The price of a spot on the sub, which can carry five people, was $250,000. It was on its third trip since OceanGate Expeditions began offering trips in 2021.
- The rescue operation is not just racing the clock — it also faces an extreme environment.
Explorers Club hopeful remotely operated vehicle can assist in search for missing submersible
A Magellan “working class” remotely operated vehicle is on the way to the search for the Titan, and it could provide equipment with a manipulator arm, the president of New York City’s Explorers Club said Wednesday.
The Magellan remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, is expected to reach the search site within 24 hours, Explorers Club President Richard Garriott told NBC New York in an interview.
“It appears now that it’s most likely that the submersible is sitting on the sea floor, and there’s reason to believe the crew is alive, because there have been sounds that appear to have been heard,” he said.
U.S. Navy experts are analyzing the noises. The U.S. Coast Guard has not given information about the possible origin of the noises. It said early Wednesday that ROV operations were relocated to explore where the sound came from.
A Magellan ROV was among the assets on the way to assist in the search for the sub, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.
A working class ROV has a manipulator arm that can attach to a hull point and potentially lift it off the surface, Garriott said.
Garriott said "there absolutely is hope." He said that those aboard will know how to stretch their available air and that the cold environment will also depress body functions and decrease the air needed.
Two of the five people aboard the submersible — Hamish Harding and Paul Henry Nargeolet — are Explorers Club members.
Titan raises legal questions for high-risk businesses
The decision by five people to undertake a dangerous and most likely ill-fated undersea voyage to visit the wreck of the Titanic is raising questions about the liabilities assumed by people and businesses taking part in risky activities.
Experts say that no set rubric determines whether a business will have to pay damages in the event of a mishap and that most operators buy liability insurance anyway because the waiver forms they ask clients to sign may not ultimately be enforceable.
In the U.S., whether a business operator becomes liable for a catastrophe can depend on the laws of the state where the business operates or even a judge’s interpretation of the waiver form, said Kenneth S. Abraham, a distinguished professor of law at the University of Virginia.
Those aboard missing submersible could be conserving oxygen
The people on the Titan could be limiting their use of oxygen as searchers look for them, potentially extending how long they can wait, an expert theorized.
The Coast Guard has estimated that the submersible could run out of air by 7 a.m. Thursday.
“It may be that they are conserving oxygen,” said Jules Jaffe, a research oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego, who was part of a team involved in finding the Titanic wreckage in 1985. “If they were imagining that they would run out of oxygen, the smart thing to do would be to reduce your metabolic effort and perhaps lay very still.”
“Maybe we’re thinking it’s going to run out of air sooner than possible,” he said in an interview on NBC News Now.
The Coast Guard projects that the oxygen supply on the Titan will run out at 7:08 a.m. ET Thursday, a spokeswoman said. OceanGate’s specs say the submersible is equipped with 96 hours of oxygen.
Search patterns show more sea scanned for Titan
The U.S. Coast Guard and other searchers continued to look for the Titan today, and the Coast Guard released a new image showing search patterns so far.
The Coast Guard also released search patterns Tuesday, and the difference is seen in the above image.
Searchers have covered an area twice the size of Connecticut on the surface, and the search underwater is about 2 ½ miles deep in what Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick has called “an incredibly complex search operation.”
An HC-130 Hercules covered 879 miles this afternoon, the Coast Guard said.
It was one of two HC-130 flights scheduled for today, Frederick said. Two flights by Canadian CP-140 Aurora planes — also called P-3s — were also scheduled for today, he said.
There are also surface ships and remotely operated vehicles, and more are on the way, officials said.
OceanGate business neighbor says he’s in disbelief
A Washington state man whose business is next to OceanGate and who knows the engineers said today he’s in disbelief that the submersible has gone missing but has hope for the five people aboard.
Bryan Dennis, who owns Puget Sound Composite in Everett, said he sees OceanGate and the people on the Titan as regular people “willing to put themselves on the edge of the innovative capacity of the technology.”
“These are the types of situations that you hear about, kind of, in Hollywood movies. It’s not something I would have thought could happen to ordinary people,” he said.
The submersible is the subject of an intense search in the North Atlantic the estimate of its remaining air dwindles.
“We have a lot of hope,” Dennis said. “I think that they are capable and competent and have the right heart for what they’re doing. And so we’ve been praying for them.”
Dennis said he has spoken to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in the past on occasion and described him as “a gentleman, scholar” and someone who is patient and a good leader.
Photos of the Titanic wreckage over 100 years later
The Titanic's final resting place at the bottom of the ocean was found in 1985, over 70 years after it sank, allowing researchers and scientists to study and capture the wreckage in images and video.
A tale of two disasters: Missing Titanic sub captivates the world days after deadly migrant shipwreck
As rescuers raced to find a handful of wealthy people and explorers who vanished after launching a mission to survey the Titanic, another disaster at sea that’s feared to have left hundreds of people dead has been swept from the spotlight.
Last week’s sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy sparked arrests, violent protests and questions about authorities’ failure to act or find a long-term solution to the issue. But many human rights advocates are frustrated that the world seems to have already moved on and that the resources and media attention being dedicated to the Titan rescue efforts far outweigh those for the sunken migrant ship.
“It’s a horrifying and disgusting contrast,” Judith Sunderland, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said in a telephone interview, reflecting on the apparent disparities in resources and media attention on the two crises.
Canadian Armed Forces share video of search for missing sub
The Titanic brought them together, and a tiny vessel could doom them
It was early 2019, and aerospace engineer Stockton Rush was racing against the clock. The wreckage of the Titanic was slowly decaying — ravaged by metal-eating bacteria, researchers found — and Rush felt there was suddenly a “pressing need to document the world’s most famous shipwreck, combined with a huge demand of people who wanted to go see it.”
“It made perfect sense,” Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. “We just had to make the submersible to get there.”
The carbon-fiber submersible his team built, known as the Titan, differentiated itself from similar vessels in part because it had room for at least four “affluent travelers,” including an expert. “If you’re going to take somebody to go see the Titanic,” he said, “it’s going to be the most life-changing experience for them. They won’t want to do it alone.”
Four years later, Rush and four other men, united by their shared zeal for adventure and the financial resources to chase after it, converged on St. John’s, Newfoundland, for the start of their voyage to survey the remnants of a luxury cruise liner that sank 111 years ago. It was OceanGate’s third trip to the remains of the Titanic, with a fare of $250,000 per traveler.