The US Coast Guard captain Jamie Frederick on Tuesday said that “about 40 hours of breathable air” is left in the deep-diving tourist submersible which went missing with five people on board near the wreck of the Titanic.
The rescue efforts of air and ship near the site in the North Atlantic “have not yielded any results,” Frederick further said while speaking to reporters in Boston.
Search operation expanded
The US Coast Guard said that the air-and-sea search for the submersible is now investigating underwater as well.
Head of the search operation Rear Admiral John Mauger, speaking to the ABC News programme ‘Good Morning America’, said that the surface ships and planes searching for the small sub are now scouring an area of around 5,000 square miles (13,000 square km).
“As we continue on with the search, we are expanding our capabilities…So we have a commercial vessel that is on the scene now that has remote-operated vehicles that will give us the ability to search under the water as well,” Mauger stated.
“Over the last three or four hours, we have flown multiple aircraft over the site looking for any signs of the surfacing of the submersible,” he added.
Mauger said that Canada’s P-3 plane has dropped sonar buoys in the region of the wreckage in the North Atlantic so that they can listen to any sound which hints at the presence of the missing submersible.
“Now the search is going underwater as well,” he stated.
The 21-foot (6.5-metre) Titan craft lost all its communication during a descent Sunday to the Titanic, which remains at a depth of more than two miles below the North Atlantic’s surface.
France’s robot-equipped ship joins search operation
The oceanographic institute of France is sending its vessel Atalante, which is equipped with a deep-sea underwater robot, to join the search operation in the North Atlantic and help find the submersible, the maritime ministry stated on Tuesday.
WATCH | Submersible touring the wreckage of the Titanic goes missing
The Atalante, which has been on a mission for the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) currently, should reach the Atlantic on Wednesday around 1800 GMT, as experts dispatched from the French port of Toulon urgently to operate the robot for its dive, the ministry stated.
The submersible, which has gone missing, is a small vessel which has a capacity of holding five people for only one day. Generally, the voyage involves two-hour dive, many hours exploring the Titanic, and again a two-hour return trip. The dives, in total, can last around 10 hours each.
(With inputs from agencies)
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