Submarine OceanGate Expeditions went missing in the Atlantic Ocean a day ago. On board are wealthy passengers who paid $250,000 for a ticket, as well as famous British billionaire Hamish Harding. What is known about the incident so far?
Who is on board?
On the eve of the bathyscaphe “Titan” of the OceanGate Expeditions company took several tourists on an expedition to the wreckage of the “Titanic”, but stopped communicating about 1 hour and 45 minutes after the start of the dive.
The US Coast Guard said five people were on board. According to Sky News, this is the founder of OceanGate Expedition Stockton Rush, the British billionaire, the owner of the company for the sale and operation of aircraft Action Aviation, Hamish Harding, the 73-year-old French-born submarine pilot Paul-Henry Nargolet, who has already dived into the wreckage of the Titanic before.
DailyMail also reports that one of Pakistan’s richest men, a board member of the British charity Prince’s Trust, billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleiman are on board.
Billionaire Harding’s presence aboard the Titan has been confirmed by Action Aviation and his relatives on social media.
What could happen?
The US Coast Guard estimates that the bathyscaphe has between 70 and 96 hours of emergency oxygen.
A spokesman for RMS Titanic, which owns exclusive rights to the area where the Titanic sank, told CNN that if the submersible was intact, people on board would experience low oxygen levels and hypothermia.
“The water is very deep – more than 2 miles. It’s like visiting another planet, it’s not what people think. It’s a sunless, cold environment and high pressure,” he said.
DailyMail, citing rescuers, reports that the submarine could be stuck in the wreckage of the Titanic, which is located 370 miles from Newfoundland in Canada, but in US waters. A U.S. Navy manned rescue submarine cannot descend to that depth, so it can only be reached by a remote-controlled vehicle.
What are the chances of survival?
An expert on deep submersibles, Professor Alistair Greig from University College London, in an interview with the BBC, offered several options for the development of events.
According to one of them, there was an accident on the Titan, the ship dropped the ballast and rose to the surface.
“If there was a power or communication failure, which could happen, then the submersible would be hanging on the surface, waiting to be found,” he said.
Another scenario, he said, is that the submarine’s hull was damaged and began to fill with water. “Then the prognosis is not very good,” Greig said.
According to Professor Greig, if the device has sunk to the seabed and cannot rise to the surface on its own, then there are few options left.
“Although the submersible may still be intact if it is at a depth of more than 200 meters, there are very few vessels that can descend to such a depth, and divers certainly cannot do it,” he said.
The website of OceanGate, which develops submersibles, says that after successful expeditions to the remains of the Titanic in 2021 and 2022, it plans to continue similar tours annually.
One of the expeditions, consisting of 12 dives, was scheduled for the summer of 2023. There are posts on the company’s Twitter about how the first few dives went.