Hopes of Rescuing Titanic Tourist Submersible Rest on Deep Diving Bots

French news site Le Figaro reported that the research vessel L’Atlante was on its way to the site. 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!”

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