‘Hold Out Hope:’ Deep Diving Bots Search for Titanic Tourist Sub as Oxygen Runs Out

A French robot capable of diving 20,000 feet deep has been deployed in the search for the Titanic tourist sub that’s been missing with five passengers aboard since Sunday. The salvage system is supposed to arrive sometime Wednesday evening, though there’s still no hint that rescuers have pinpointed the exact location of the missing Titanic tourist sub.

Guillermo Sohnlein, the co-founder of OceanGate, which operated the voyage, said in a statement Thursday, “I continue to hold out hope for my friend and the rest of the crew.”

Rescuers have been scouring the area where tourism company OceanGate last lost contact with the $250,000-per-person carbon fiber submersible. Early on Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard revealed that Canadian aircraft “detected underwater noises” in the search area. The coast guard said it had relocated operations to that area to investigate, but the agency said the search “yielded negative results.”

The timeline for finding the missing passengers is tightening. As of Tuesday afternoon the maritime security agency estimated the submersible would have only 40 hours of oxygen left based on the sub’s stated 96-hour oxygen supply. By Thursday morning, the amount of oxygen has dwindled to just a few hours left for the sub lost around 900 miles east of Cape Cod.

Sohnlein’s statement read, “Today will be a critical day in this search and rescue mission, as the sub’s life support supplies are starting to run low,” I’m certain that Stockton and the rest of the crew realized days ago that the best thing they can do to ensure their rescue is to extend the limits of those supplies by relaxing as much as possible. I firmly believe that the time window available for their rescue is longer than what most people think.”

French news site Le Figaro reported that the research vessel, L’Atlante, had been deployed. As the site reported, on board is a remotely-operated salvage robot called Victor 6000 that’s capable of diving around 20,000 feet deep.

At 8:40 a.m. ET Wednesday, the U.S. Coast Guard said that several ships with side sonar capabilities had arrived to help detect and image objects on the sea floor. Those and other vessels are conducting search patterns in the area, though L’Atlante is still en route, and it’s not expected to arrive until 8 p.m. Wednesday. One of those ships is the Bahamian pipelay vessel Deep Energy, which is used to lay pipes along the sea floor. It also contains a remotely operated vehicle capable of diving 3,000 meters, or a little under 10,000 feet deep. The Titanic sits on the floor approximately 12,500 feet below sea level.

The OceanGate sub was supposed to launch at 8 a.m. ET June 18 and resurface at 3 p.m., but just an hour and 45 minutes into the dive the controlling ship, the Polar Prince, lost contact and nothing has been heard from it since.

According to past reports, the five-person Titan sub houses passengers in a tube the size of a minivan. It has one toilet located where everybody can see, and the owners openly talked about how they sourced some parts from places like “Camper World.”

Reports surfaced showing at least one former employee claimed they were fired after expressing safety concerns.

David Pogue, a CBS reporter and New York Times columnist who has reported on the company wrote on Twitter that during his trip with OceanGate, the crew lost connection to the sub for nearly five hours. He even claimed that the crew shut off the internet access to keep passengers from tweeting about the lost sub. The reason why that detail didn’t make it into the report, Pogue said, was because “the company gave us a different rationale for shutting off the Internet… That this could be an emergency, and they needed all channels open… And we had no idea how to confirm whether or not that was true.”

Most of the OceanGate vessel’s passengers are wealthy explorers or businessmen. British billionaire Hamish Harding is among those currently lost, and some attention has turned toward the man’s family. Harding’s stepson Brian Szasz wrote on Facebook offering “thoughts and prayers that the rescue mission will be successful.” TMZ reported Szasz then followed up that post by saying he was attending a Blink-182 concert in San Diego. The billionaire’s scion wrote, “It might be distasteful being here but my family would want me to be at the Blink-182 show as it’s my favorite band and music helps me in difficult times!”

This article is part of a developing story. Our writers and editors will be updating this page as new information is released. Please check back again in a few minutes to see the latest updates. Meanwhile, if you want more news coverage, check out our tech, science, or io9 front pages. And you can always see the most recent Gizmodo news stories at gizmodo.com/latest.

Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews

Entertainment blogs & Forums