In a race against time, efforts are expanding to locate the submarine Titan, with which contact with her and her crew was lost on Sunday. Currently, the five people locked inside the capsule have 20 hours of oxygen left – assuming they are still alive.
The submarine "Titan" in one of its dives, photo: AFP
Eight ships with different capabilities are joining the search operation in the North Atlantic. Three of them – two Canadian Coast Guard ships and a merchant ship – arrived at the scene of the search in recent hours. They will join Polar Prince, which transported Titan to the diving arena, and Deep Energy, a pipe-laying ship.
Capsule "Titan" before the last dive, photo: AP
In the coming hours, the French L'Atlant, which carries a robot capable of diving to a depth of 6 km, is expected to arrive at the scene in the early morning. The robot, the Victor 6000, is equipped with remotely operated arms, and if the capsule is indeed stuck on the seabed – perhaps even inside the skeleton of the Titanic itself – it will be possible to try to free it. However, Victor is unable to lift the Titan himself, but is able to help connect her to a ship that will pull her to the surface of the sea.
"We don't know what happened," said Olivier Lefour, an executive at the company that operates the robot. "The noises heard today give hope that the submarine is on the seabed and that the humans in it are still alive, but also other scenarios than possible. Even if there is only a glimmer of hope, we will make every effort."
Reminder: Titan began diving into the wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday morning. The descent to the ocean floor should have taken two hours, but after an hour and 45 minutes, at a depth of 3,500 meters, contact with the submarine was lost. There were five in the belly of the Titan: Pakistani businessman Shahzadeh Dawood and his son Suleiman, British adventurer Hamish Harding, Titanic explorer Pierre-Henri Narjolais, and Stockton Rush, CEO of Oceangate, the submarine's operator.
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