Global Courant
Crews searching for a missing submarine en route to the Titanic received no updates Thursday morning as the timeline for oxygen remaining on board ticked.
Wednesday began early with reports of undersea noise detected during the search, though that yielded no further clues about the location of the missing ship.
But Thursday marked the day when the estimated onboard oxygen supply is likely to reach its maximum 96 hours.
The U.S. Coast Guard, in charge, has not provided any updates on the search for the submarine, called the Titan, that went missing off St. John’s early Sunday morning while diving for the Titanic’s wreckage.
The Associated Press reported that the air supply is expected to end between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. EDT today, based on information from the U.S. Coast Guard and OceanGate Expeditions, the owner and operator of the submarine.
The Titan carries five passengers: 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.
‘A CRITICAL DAY’
On Thursday, OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein wrote on Facebook, “Today will be a critical day.”
“I’m sure Stockton (Rush) and the rest of the crew realized days ago that the best thing they can do to ensure their rescue is to push the limits of those (oxygen) supplies by using as much as possible. relax,” Sohnlein said. “I firmly believe that the time available for their rescue is longer than most people think.”
Officials said Wednesday that efforts to find the submarine would increase hourly until Thursday morning.
The submarine was on its way to the site of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, about 600 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland at a depth of about 3,800 meters.
The crew aboard the support vessel, the Polar Prince, lost contact with the submarine one hour and 45 minutes into the dive on Sunday.
OceanGate Expeditions has been running tours to the British ocean liner since 2021. Since the disappearance, details have emerged from a 2018 technical report claiming problems with the submarine’s structure.
On Tuesday, a Canadian aircraft picked up “underwater noises” from an area of the search. Officials quickly swarmed the area with teams in hopes of finding the submarine’s location.
