What went wrong with the expedition to the wreck of the liner
The missing submersible near the wreck of the Titanic, which began a feverish international search, “shattered” the research community deep sea, says famed Canadian scientist and veteran explorer Joe McInnis.
/82/01/56/d718d5aa77c45d503c7d83159975e822.jpg» class=»article__picture-image» alt=»What went wrong with the expedition to the crash site» />
A member of the first expedition to find the wreck of the Titanic says the deep sea community is left «in tatters».
“This is the day we've been dreading for a long, long time – when you lose a submarine in really deep water,” Joe McInnis, a member of the first expedition to locate the Titanic wreck in 1985, told The Guardian. “It doesn't look good.”
Canadian and US authorities deployed specialized aircraft and ships to search for five people aboard the 6.4-meter vessel, which lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after it was scheduled to dive into Sunday, almost 400 miles (640 km) off the coast of Newfoundland, writes The Guardian.
US submersible owner OceanGate Expeditions said it was «exploring all options» for the crew's safe return.
OceanGate is organizing trips that combine commercial tourism with scientific research to the final resting place of the ill-fated ocean liner that collided hit an iceberg in 1912 and sank, killing over 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew.
According to Joe McInnis, crews on deep sea expeditions often worry about the “trinity” of fire, hull failure, or entanglement .
According to The Guardian, McInnis is an experienced deep sea explorer who made 17 trips to the famous wreck with a Russian crew as part of the filming of the Titanic documentary in 1992.
He is also close friends with filmmaker James Cameron, whom he introduced to Russian submarine pilots. “The next thing you know is that Jim hires them and does all his Titanic dives before making his big movie,” he said, referring to the 1997 mega-blockbuster directed by Cameron.< /p>
During his second expedition to the Titanic, MacInnis and his crew were briefly stranded on part of the wreck. The second submarine was sent to reconnoiter, and the two of them found a way to carefully free the ship. During the same flight, the crew lost radio contact after the submarine went behind the propellers of the Titanic to film footage for a documentary.
“I will tell you that for a while we puzzled and hoped that everything was in order. As soon as they returned from under the stern, we restored radio contact. And it was a big, big relief,” recalls the expedition member.
While the McInnis teams momentarily lost contact, by Monday evening, the Titan had been out of touch for over 30 hours. “This is of great concern, especially as time passes,” the veteran researcher said.
McInnis said that if the submersible is deep in the ocean, any recovery would be “incredibly costly.”
“In any accident, you really need an analysis of what went wrong. And I suspect there will be a lot of controversy in this case, and [if lost] we will probably see an attempt to recover it if they can.”
On Monday, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard told reporters that the crews are «doing their best» to find the submersible.
The Coast Guard relies on aircraft, some of which have underwater detection capabilities. But officials have acknowledged that for now they have the ability to search only by sounds.
Officers hope the ship has somehow surfaced and is drifting somewhere in the North Atlantic in the end. waiting for rescue, writes The Guardian.
«We've been afraid of this for a long time,» McInnis said, adding that the news shocked the tight-knit community of scientists and explorers who have spent most of their lives plunging deeper into the darkness of the sea.
“But that is the reality of the ocean, especially in its deeper waters. It really is a place of burning fear. And it's a place of elusive beauty,” he said.
Search and rescue teams are racing to find a tourist submersible that went missing with five people on board while diving to study the wreck of the Titanic.
According to the US Coast Guard, contact with the Titan submersible was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes after it sank Sunday afternoon. Here's what we know about the vessel and what could have happened.
The Titan is a research submersible that can carry five people, typically a pilot and four «mission specialists» that may include archaeologists, marine biologists, or anyone who can afford an expensive trip as a tourist.
Constructed of “titanium and filament-wound carbon fibre”, the 6.7-meter vessel weighs 10,432 kg, the equivalent of about six medium-sized cars, and is capable of diving to depths of up to 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) “with a comfortable margin of safety.” according to OceanGate operator.
It uses four electric motors to propel itself and is equipped with a battery of cameras, lights and scanners to study its environment. OceanGate claims that the Titan's viewscreen is «the largest of any deep submersible» and that its technology provides «an unrivaled view» of the ocean's depths. It uses Elon Musk's Starlink satellite technology for communications, although it's unclear if a problem with it caused the loss of contact.
OceanGate tweeted last week: “Without any cell towers in the middle of the ocean, we rely on @Starlink in providing the communications we need throughout the 2023 Titanic expedition.
According to David Concannon, an adviser to tour operator OceanGate, the unit has a supply of oxygen in cylinders for 96 hours, which is approximately 6 am Sunday local time, which theoretically will last until Thursday morning. However, this will be affected by the breathing rate of those inside the vessel, especially if there are tourists on board with limited diving experience.
It's too early to tell what happened, but experts have suggested some of the most likely scenarios, from being entangled in the wreckage of the Titanic, to a power failure or malfunction in the submarine's communications system.
The wreck of the Titanic that lies on about 3,800 meters (12,500 feet) deep at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by smaller debris from a disaster more than a century old.
“Parts of it are scattered all over the place. It's dangerous,” said Frank Owen, a retired Royal Australian Navy officer and director of the Submarine Rescue Project.
Contact with the sub was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes after the Titan's dive, suggesting the crew may have been close to the surface or at the bottom, Owen says. The Titan has a maximum speed of three knots, but the deeper it sinks, the slower it moves.
In the event of entanglement, power or communications outages, the Titan is equipped with drop weights that can be released in an emergency, creating enough buoyancy to lift it to the surface. The Titan is also equipped with a variety of signaling and lighting devices, reflectors and other equipment that can be used once on the surface to attract attention.
Another scenario is that there was a leak in a pressure case, and in In this case, the prognosis is poor, warns Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London.
“If it has sunk to the seabed and cannot get back up under its own power, the options are very limited,” Greig said. “Although the submersible may still be intact, if it is outside the continental shelf, very few vessels can get to such a depth, and certainly not divers.”
Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, told Sky News that the seabed rescue is a “very complex operation”: “The actual nature of the seabed is very undulating. The Titanic itself lies in a trench. There is a lot of garbage around. So trying to discriminate, particularly with sonar, and targeting the area you want to search with another submersible will be really difficult.”
American and Canadian planes are combing the area, as well as capital ships, but crews don't know if a vessel has surfaced, meaning they have to comb both the surface and the ocean depths, said Rear Adm. .
Concannon said officials are working to get a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) capable of diving up to 6,000 meters to the site as soon as possible.
These drones are dropped over the side of a vessel they are connected by an “umbilical cord” that allows the pilot to control the engines, as well as transmit real-time data from sonar and cameras.
However, the amount of wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor means that it can take time to distinguish , which is the wreckage of the liner that sunk in 1912, and which is the “Titan”. The search teams at least have a starting point: the vessel's location was tracked until contact was lost.
The company's managing director, Mark Butler, told AP: “We still have enough time to facilitate the rescue mission, there are survival equipment in this case,” says Butler. “We all hope and pray that they return safe and sound.”