Global Courant
A Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) aircraft involved in a search for a missing submarine en route to the Titanic has detected “underwater noises”.
Just after midnight EDT on Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Twitter that both underwater and aerial investigations have been “moved in an effort to investigate the origin of the noises.”
It is not clear whether the sounds are related to the missing submarine.
Search crews are looking for a five-passenger submarine that lost contact with the surface ship the Polar Prince early Sunday morning after leaving St. John’s, NL
The missing ship is called the Titan and was on its way to the wreck of the 1912 Titanic, which is about 600 kilometers off the coast of NL. The tours are owned and operated by OceanGate, a US based company.
The submarine carries Hamish Harding, a billionaire explorer, Paul-Henry (PH) Nargeolet, a French explorer, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, members of a prominent Pakistani family, and OceanGate CEO and Titan pilot Stockton Rush.
The US and Canadian Coast Guards and the RCAF have crews searching for the ship that lost contact an hour and 45 minutes into the expedition.
Officials said at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday afternoon that there was enough oxygen on board the Titan for just 40 hours.
“This is a complex search effort that requires multiple agencies with subject matter expertise and specialized equipment,” U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick told reporters at a news conference in Boston on Tuesday.
The sounds discovered by a Canadian plane are the first potential clue in the case since the search began.
This is an evolving story.
Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater sounds in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were moved in an effort to investigate the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches returned negative results, but continue. 1/2
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 21, 2023