Rescue Teams Race To Find Underwater Tourist Craft Visiting The Titanic Before Its Air Runs Out

An international search-and-rescue effort has been launched to locate a missing tourist submersible that was visiting the wreck of the Titanic deep in the Atlantic Ocean.

In a press conference in Boston, Massachusetts, Monday, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said the search, comprising aircraft and boats, is taking place in water about 13,000 feet deep and 900 miles off Cape Cod.

Mauger underscored the urgency of the mission to find the missing submersible, as it was designed to sustain 96 hours of air in case of emergency, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"It is a remote area — and it is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area," Mauger said.

The coast guard official said other team members of the search operation are exploring other ways to recover the submersible, including retrieving it deep in the ocean.

According to Mark Butler, the managing director of Action Aviation, they assessed that the missing submersible has only "80 plus hours of oxygen remaining, clothes, food, toilet and emergency equipment to allow the survival of those on board."

Butler added that more vessels were deployed to find the missing submersible before it runs out of oxygen.

The underwater vessel, with five people on board, submerged Sunday morning, and its support vessel lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later, the coast guard said.

British billionaire Hamish Harding is aboard the submersible and acting as one of the mission specialists, according to Action Aviation.

The tourists, carried by the submersible, paid $250,000 each to visit the Titanic shipwreck deep in the ocean.

The Associated Press reported that OceanGate Expeditions operates the missing underwater vessel. It was scheduled to depart from St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada, in early May and finish the expedition at the end of this month, according to the documents filed by the company with a U.S. District Court in Virginia that handles Titanic matters.

OceanGate said in its court filing that the submersible, Titan, can dive 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) "with a comfortable safety margin."

The craft is made of "titanium and filament wound carbon fiber" and can "withstand the enormous pressures of the deep ocean," OceanGate said, adding that Titan had an "unparalleled safety feature" that checks the integrity of the hull during its expedition.

Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives, including to the equivalent depth of the Titanic, the company said at the time of its court filing.

However, OceanGate stated in its November 2022 court filing that Titan suffered "modest damage" from a battery issue on its first dive and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform.

The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, leaving all but about 700 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew dead.