Early on Wednesday, the US Coast Guard stated that rescuers searching for the missing Titanic submersible had heard “underwater noises” in the region where the craft had vanished two days earlier.
“Canadian P-3 aircraft heard noises under the surface while searching. As a result, ROV (remotely operated vehicle) operations were moved in an effort to investigate the source of the noises, according to a tweet from the US Coast Guard’s First District.
The maritime military section said that the ROV searches “have produced no results but continue.”
Underwater Noises
An official US government email was cited by CNN as evidence that sonar had detected Underwater Noises, but the memo did not specify when the noises were heard on Tuesday, how long they lasted, or what might have produced them.
The new government memo stated that “additional acoustic feedback was heard and will assist in vectoring surface assets and also indicating continued hope of survivors,” according to CNN.
If the news reports came from the same source was not immediately apparent.
According to its specifications, the Titan, owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions in the United States, can stay below for 96 hours, allowing the five people on board until Thursday AM when the air runs out.
Early on Sunday, a small submarine with one captain and four passengers lost contact with a parent ship on the surface about an hour and a half into a two-hour dive.
U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick told reporters during a press conference on Tuesday that American and Canadian planes have searched more than 7,600 square miles of open sea, an area larger than the state of Connecticut.
According to Frederick, a commercial vessel equipped with a remote-controlled deepwater submersible was also looking in the area.
Separately, at the request of the U.S. Navy, a French research ship carrying its own deep-sea diving robot vehicle was sent to the search region and was due to arrive Wednesday night local time, according to the Ifremer research institute.
Those British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, with his 19-year-old son Suleman, both British citizens, were on Titan for a tourist adventure that costs $250,000 per person.
Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, and 77-year-old French adventurer Paul-Henri Nargeolet were reportedly said to be on board. Authorities have not yet affirmed any passenger’s identity.
Experts say that finding the Titan and saving everyone on board will be difficult tasks for rescuers.
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Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, believes that the pilot would have released weights to float back to the surface in the event of a mid-dive emergency. However, given the absence of contact, finding a van-sized submersible in the enormous Atlantic