Complex Search Operations to Find Submersible ‘Titan’ Has Intensified

A small submersible ‘Titan’ which had set out towards the Titanic wreckage has gone missing in the North Atlantic Ocean on Sunday. 

There were five people onboard which included a British adventurer Hamish Harding and a British Businessman Shahzada Dawood. 

The vessel was 6.7 metre long made of carbon fibre and titanium. OceanGate is the company that operated the missing submersible. 

The contact with the small sub was lost one hour and forty five minutes into its dive. 

Rescue teams which include the U S Coast Guard, Canadian Joint Rescue Centre and research vessels from France are conducting search operations. 

A search vessel is picking up “banging sounds” at a regular interval of 30 minutes. 

Explorers Club which is a group involved in the rescue operations say that data from the search site shows “signs of life.”

The submersible has been designed to have an oxygen supply of 96 hours in case of an emergency and at present 30 hours of breathable air is left in the vessel. It means that the oxygen supply could deplete completely by Thursday morning. 

Due to oxygen supply concerns, the search operations have intensified.

Once the sub goes below a thousand metres, there will be darkness. 

“It's pitch black down there. It's freezing cold. The seabed is mud, and it's undulating. You can't see your hand in front of your face. It's really a bit like being an astronaut going into space,” Titanic expert Tim Maltin told NBC News Now.

It is said that the location which is 900 miles east of Cape Cod and the depth of 13,000 feets makes the search operations more complex. 

Questions on the safety of the vessel are also being raised.