The submarine carrying five people to the wreckage of the Titanic remains missing as of Wednesday afternoon, though “banging noises” have been detected near the submarine’s last known location, according to an official at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
These sounds, however, are yet to be definitively linked to the missing vessel. The U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, in an interview with CBS News, reminded that the area is laden with metallic debris from the Titanic, potentially the source of the noises.
Despite the detection of sounds, the search efforts have so far yielded no concrete results. “You have to remember that it’s the wreck site of the Titanic, so there is a lot of metal and different objects in the water around the site,” Mauger said. The underwater drones deployed to the location of the noises have not found the submersible. The vast and remote nature of the search area, larger than Connecticut on the surface and over 2 miles deep, adds to the complexity of the search operation.
Among those onboard the missing submersible named Titan are: the pilot Stockton Rush, head of OceanGate, which developed the Titan; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French underwater wreck expert; British entrepreneur Hamish Harding; and Pakistani nationals Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, who are father and son. The Titan lost contact with its control ship less than two hours after submersion, having already descended halfway to the Titanic wreck.
The submersible was equipped with an oxygen supply anticipated to run out early Thursday morning. The Titan’s design allows it to be unsealed only from the outside, which implies passengers would need external help to emerge.
Search efforts have seen the involvement of commercial vessels and resources from the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards, capable of deploying remotely operated diving robots. A Canadian Coast Guard ship, John Cabot, with side-scanning sonar capabilities, is present on-site. The Canadian Ship Glace Bay, equipped with a mobile decompression chamber and staffed with medical personnel, is also en route to the location.
