The research is difficult but there is still hope. Sonar picked up “underwater noises” during search operations in the North Atlantic for the missing submarine with five people on board near the wreck of the Titanic, confirmed on Wednesday June 21, the US Coast Guard.
“Canadian P-3 aircraft have detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) operations have been moved to attempt to explore the origin of the noises,” announced the U.S. Coast Guard’s First District on its official Twitter account. ROV searches “have yielded negative results but are continuing”, he added.
A submarine visits the wreck of the Titanic lost at sea
© / afp.com/Valentin RAKOVSKY, Laurence SAUBADU
On Tuesday, the US Coast Guard warned at a press conference in Boston (northeast) that there were “about 40 hours of breathable air” left in this small submersible and that the “particularly complex” research launched on Sunday had so far “produced no results”. Designed to take five people to the abyss, the Titan is around 6.5 meters long and began its descent off the northeast American coast on Sunday and contact with the craft was lost less than two hours after its descent. departure.
Who are the passengers?
Among the people on board is a wealthy British businessman, Hamish Harding, 58, who had announced on Instagram his participation in this extreme, extraordinary scientific excursion steeped in history. He is also known to have been a space tourist aboard billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin spacecraft.
Another follower of extreme exploits, the former diver and ex-French naval officer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, a specialist in the wreckage of the Titanic, is also on the trip, according to his family.
Also on board for this $250,000 dive, Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood, 48 and vice-president of the Engro conglomerate, embarked with his son Suleman, 19, according to the family of this great fortune.
Where are the searches?
The American armed forces, supported by Canada and France, hope to save by Thursday an American, a Frenchman, a Briton and two Pakistanis, passengers of this tourist submarine descended to visit the wreck of the Titanic by 4,000 meters bottom in the North Atlantic.
The company OceanGate Expeditions, organizer of the trip and whose American boss Stockton Rush is also on board, assured “mobilize all options to bring the crew back safely”.
The US Coast Guard, a body of armed forces, first dispatched two C-130 planes to the search area, “about 1,450 km east of Cape Cod” (northeast coast of the United States) . A third C-130 and three other C-17 transport planes were to be deployed Tuesday evening, the Pentagon said.
The Canadian Coast Guard also mobilized an aircraft and a ship while France announced that its Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) was dispatching a boat and its robot.
US President Joe Biden wants the Coast Guard to continue their search and the Navy can be mobilized if necessary, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.