The Coast Guard’s announcement came minutes after OceanGate Exploration, the company that owns the Titan submarine and conducts Titanic dives, said it believed the passengers were dead.
“Our hearts go out to these five souls and each member of their families at this sad time,” the company said in a statement Thursday.
The Titan, a 21-foot tourist submarine, lost contact with its Canadian-owned mother ship, the Polar Prince, on Sunday morning, prompting a wide-ranging search led by the US and Canadian coastguards that has intensified around the clock internationally. attention Commercial, research and private ships and aircraft, as well as teams from the United States, Canada and other countries, combined to search an area of the North Atlantic twice the size of Connecticut.
In the early hours of the search, a Navy analysis of acoustics in the water “anomaly” pinpointed an explosion or loss of communications at the approximate location and time of the explosion.
“Although not conclusive, this information was immediately shared with the incident commander and assisted in the ongoing search and rescue operation,” a senior Navy official told POLITICO.
The official added that the finding was part of the consideration for continuing the rescue operation and helped “narrow down” its search area.
The Wall Street Journal Navy reported detection Thursday afternoon after the Coast Guard and Oceangate reported that the vessel was presumed dead.
The Coast Guard estimated the five passengers aboard the Titan had about 40 hours of oxygen as of Tuesday afternoon. If it had been They predict that oxygen will run out Sometimes Thursday.
As of Wednesday afternoon, U.S. and Canadian officials voiced confidence that the operation would be a search-and-rescue mission.
“We are in the middle of a search and rescue operation, and we will continue to put every asset at our disposal into trying to locate the Titan and crew members,” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said in a news release. Conference in Boston on Wednesday.
If the submarine is found, the Navy deploys the Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System, FADOSS, to Newfoundland.
OceanGate Exploration has successfully conducted expeditions to the shipwreck in 2021 and 2022, according to the company’s website. A trip with OceanGate, the only company to dive to the Titanic site, costs a “citizen scientist” $250,000.
Concerns was raised During submarine construction. Experts don’t know if a ship made of carbon fiber can withstand repeated trips to the depths of the ocean floor and exposure to extreme pressure on the seabed.
The five people on board were identified as Hamish Harding, 58, a billionaire British explorer; Paul-Henri Narjolet, 77, a French Titanic expert; British businessman Shahjata Dawood, 48, and his son, Sulaiman, 19; and Stockton Rush, 61, founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions.
Laura Seligman and Andrew Zhang contributed to this report.
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