Missing Titanic sub has 40 hours of oxygen left says US Coast Guard - BBC News

but we start with that huge search the race to save five people who are on board a submersible that has gone missing in the North Atlantic close to the wreck of the Titanic earlier the U.S Coast Guard said that the vessel may only have 40 hours of breathable air left for the five people on board well ships and planes are scouring the ocean around 640 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada the search area is as large as the U.S state of Connecticut officials say an underwater search vessel has now been launched well the Titanic which sank in 1912 lies nearly 4 000 meters below the surface on Sunday all contact whether it was lost with the sub uh about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive correspondent Jessica Parker has this report on the daunting task that is now facing Rescuers these are the last known photos of the Titan submersible they were taken on Sunday morning just before it began its descent an hour and 45 minutes later contact was lost it's a five-man capsule that people crawl into this was filmed by the BBC last year it shows people being bolted in from the outside a sub then plunges into the ocean's depths those on board are believed to be the British billionaire Hamish Harding British businessman shahazadaud and his son French explorer Paul Andrei nashulay and this man stopped and Rush the chief executive of the Expedition company Ocean Gate it's basically a Sony PlayStation style controller here he is in May 2022 CBS documentary showing how the vessel was operated via a games console while construction pipes were used for ballast this is an experimental sub people are informed that it's very dangerous down there trying to find the vessel one Coast Guard official I've been speaking to described the search as like looking for a needle in a haystack the area that we search is is roughly about the size of Connecticut as we continue on with the search we're expanding our capabilities to be able to search under the water as well the sap was towed out to sea from Newfoundland before arriving at the wreck site on Sunday it then began its dive in coordination with a mother ship the polar Prince once a vessel goes below a thousand meters it'll be in darkness no light farther down is the Titanic wreck 3 800 meters under the North Atlantic Mike Reese is one of the few people who've made the trip before he describes reaching the bottom of the ocean when you touch bottom you don't really know where you are and again the compass immediately stopped working and was just spinning around and so we had to flail around blindly at the bottom of the ocean knowing the Titanic was somewhere there but it was it is so pitch dark in the Seas murkiest reaches this is what people pay nearly two hundred thousand pounds to see Ocean Gate Expeditions says it's getting help from government agencies and deep sea companies and it's praying for the cruise safe return Jessica Parker BBC News in Boston or Captain Jamie Frederick from the First Coast Guard district has been speaking about the latest search efforts and his team's plans for the next 24 hours I'll provide a brief recap of our coordinated search efforts for the 21 foot submersible with five people on board along with providing an update on current search efforts and plans for the next 24 hours on behalf of all the men and women of the United States Coast Guard and our search Partners we offer our most heartfelt thoughts and prayers for the five crew members their families and their loved ones our crews are working around the clock to ensure that we are doing everything possible to locate the Titan and the five crew members yesterday we stood up a unified command consisting of expertise from the United States Coast Guard the United States Navy Canadian Armed Forces and Coast Guard and the Titans parent company Ocean Gate Expedition this is a complex search effort which requires multiple agencies with subject matter expertise and specialized equipment while the U.S Coast Guard has assumed the role of search and rescue mission coordinator we do not have all of the necessary expertise and Equipment retired required in the search of this nature the unified command brings that expertise in additional capability together to maximize effort in solving this very complex problem so how will it be solved let's talk to my colleague Cole nassman who's in Boston for us now and Carl we heard there from the search and rescue teams the first part is simply locating this vessel before they can even get into the logistics of how they might be able to recover it and the five people on board yeah I guess the best way to describe this as kind of a two-step process the first step could be one of the most difficult and that's simply finding the vessel where is it it could be at the very bottom of the ocean it could be floating somehow at the top it might have submerged on its own the second part will it be even more difficult and that's the very technical and very treacherous and difficult and specialized rescue operation that then might take place because there are very few vessels that are capable of traveling to the depths of the ocean that we're talking about some two and a half miles below the surface that is a very long way the typical submarine that you might think of only goes a few hundred meters deep and we're talking about thousands of meters deep I just want to set the scene for you where we are is Boston we're about 900 miles away from the site of the Shipwreck of the Titanic and that's where we believe that's submersible the Titan is located this is what the US Navy is calling its unified command so they're bringing together a community locations between the Coast Guard excuse me so between the Coast Guard the U.S Navy as well as Canadian officials you heard the mention there and this is an important point that the U.S Coast Guard simply doesn't have the knowledge or the equipment to carry out this search and rescue mission and that is why we're seeing such an international effort now bringing in various countries we have equipment on the way from France we've heard from Canada and the US as well in addition commercial agencies commercial vessels there on the scene as well and that's because this is such a difficult operation it's very far away from the coastline and it's such a deep sight as well that this is going to be all hands on deck and as we heard during the press conference this really is a full court press that's how they're describing it yeah and everything you've outlined there Cole suggests it takes time the logistics that need to now fall into place for this search and rescue to really get underway and yet at the same time we are told that there are just 40 hours left of breathing double air on this vessel the clock is ticking the clock is ticking and time is really the most precious resource right now this was a submersible that's not designed to spend days or weeks underneath the surface of the ocean like a submarine would we believe it has about 96 hours so four days worth of oxygen on board once that runs out we're not sure what might happen but there is potentially hope that it could last a bit longer than that but about four days and more than two days have passed so time is of the essence if they want to be able to reach the vessel in time and there's one interesting note as well that even if this submersible had come up to the surface and is waiting for a rescue craft to reach it they're not able to open the submersible from the inside and hearing some reports from people that have been on this craft before from a CVS reporter as well that this is something that can only be open from the outside there's 17 bolts and that is simply because you want to make this as as watertight as possible especially at those depths so whether it's below the ocean whether it's above the ocean this vessel needs to be found in order for those five people that are on board to be rescued for now Carl thank you that's Cole nessman there live in Boston for us uh let's speak to David Gallo who is an American oceanographer and a deep sea Explorer he co-led an exploration of the Titanic in 2010 and co-led the successful International effort to locate the wreck site of Air France flight 447. thank you David for being with us um you must plan for things like this happening uh I guess you hope you pray that you will never need to make a rescue of this sort but what are the preparations for an emergency of this kind you're very interested interesting that you say that because I think in this it's a very small community the deep ocean community and I think that we've all thought that this is going to happen someday and for decades we've gotten away with nothing happening like this but we did know what would happen and it just is a little bit burning that there was no preparation for stuff no one ever really there are no policies no no one on call no what do we do if um now there is a protocol that you do of course first you want to be able to use the vessels and vehicles and tools that are in the area and hopefully they're suitable and in this case they are the Newfoundland has got many many ships and some of the underwater survey tools that you need um this is but in terms of the uh of the actual technique and and how do you use all those it's really uh not easy to um know that until you know a lot about you know where was the submarine last seen I think we know that uh what are the environmental conditions anyway there's a number of variables so uh it's very difficult to say this is the order that we're going to uh you can have some idea but specifically it's not easy and also I think having an armada of vessels on the way is not always the best thing to do um so there's a lot that we could do better in the future but this whole thing right now is incredibly sad and one more thing those things you mentioned the Titanic expedition that I co-led and uh the Air France fighting the Air France uh plane those were all done with ph narsley who's uh sadly on board the Expedition and probably in the submarine and so this is especially bitter for a lot of us I our prayers and hearts go out to all the families of the victims and uh but in this case you know I've got now a double I've got a uh a personal stake in this too and that pH is involved yes um I wanted to ask that you've described uh Paul Henry as one of your closest colleagues and you've touched there on the on the diving Community a very small community particularly in that part of the world many of you know each other so um it is a very worrying time for anyone involved in it um describe to me if you will a little bit about the dissent because it's very difficult for people who are not familiar with this sort of thing to get their head around quite how deep it is where the Titanic lies on the bottom of the ocean and we often say don't we that we know more about space than we do about the bottom of our own oceans such as the depth and the complexity of getting down there yes exactly I mean uh we've only explored maybe 10 percent of the world's oceans and in that 10 percent we find things that we never expected the world's greatest mountain range highest mountain peaks deepest and longest valleys underwater Rivers underwater waterfalls underwater Lakes so it's not a big blue fish bowl and any Expo Expedition that takes you deep into the ocean it's almost like going to a totally different planet uh you at the surface you have that lovely color blue that we're all familiar with of the the shallow ocean and then you begin the dive you pass through that blue into medium blue deep blue then dark blue and then for two hours it's about two and a half hour trip all together but about two of those it's in perfectly pitch black and uh and up on the top we call it the Twilight Zone that transitioned from Blue to deep blue but the rest of it is the midnight zone and no light has ever been there the sun has never been there and it's very cold too so by the time you get to the bottom you realize you're in a totally different space and in the earlier comments you heard that you could be a meter or five meters from the Titanic and never know that it's right there because it's that dark and the sun lights don't penetrate the ocean very far you can't use radio waves in the ocean so GPS is out and radio communications are out so it's just not what people think I think a lot of people feel that it's just a dive to a deeper place but it's uh it's not you're leaving the world that we know the familiar World Behind and entering this very unfamiliar world even Titanic that's been visited many many times where we find something new almost every expedition to Titanic it really is fascinating to hear you describe it in those terms and it really gives you a sense of what those rescue efforts will be up against right now and David there are some reports of an emergency ping an alerts that may have come from The Vessel and I guess at this point we don't know whether that was generated by those on board or it was done automatically and and if anything that just reinforces the idea of quite how remote and quite how isolated those people may feel right now there is no radio connection you can't just radio back to the ship above talk to me about the the difficulty of communicating with a vessel at such depths well yeah I mean you can't there's no radio waves as I said so you have to use sound and you can do that but um the bandwidth if you want to call it that way you certainly can't have a conversation more than to say okay not okay here we are that kind of thing uh sometimes you use code uh almost like a telegraph to send beep beep beep and there's a code that you know what that means we're okay that means we're we're uh in trouble um the idea that there's a ping I I live through the Malaysian air incident that year long trying to find the Malaysian Aaron there's so many rumors about the narrow there were pings that we know we've got it tomorrow we're going to have it boy we hear the Ping and it was not from the uh uh Eric aircraft at all so I'm careful to look at those you can't help but not pay attention to those because it might be true and I think you have to check that out but uh you know I don't know if there was a ping where it would have come from if the sub had that ability uh to send out a ping don't know David I'm really grateful for you talking to us um tonight I know this is very difficult for all those who knew uh Paul or no Paul onry and those on boards so we really do hope that there is some good news that we can report for everyone involved very soon but thank you for being with us it's David Gallagher

Channel: BBC News

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Id: pKXXo2DFvmQ

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023