A vast international search operation in the North Atlantic continues on Thursday with the reinforcement of a French ship to find the Titan submersible and its five occupants, missing near the wreckage of the Titanic, while its air supplies are rapidly depleting.
The US Coast Guard remains "optimistic." But rescuers believe the passengers could soon run out of oxygen aboard the Titan, a small deep-sea explorer from the private US company OceanGate Expeditions.
Disappeared since Sunday, the machine has a theoretical autonomy of 96 hours in immersion. “We have to remain optimistic and hopeful,” US Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said during a news conference in Boston.
The announcement of the detection of underwater noise by Canadian P-3 aircraft raised hope and directed the multinational army of rescuers sent to the scene. But no one can be sure "what those noises are," says Captain Frederick.
The means deployed in particular by the US and Canadian armies continue to arrive at the place where the Titan submersible left. A ship with medical personnel and a decompression chamber is on its way.
The Atlante, a French Ifremer research vessel, arrived at the site in the morning, the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea reported. It is equipped with a robot, the ROV Victor 6000, capable of diving to the wreck of the Titanic that is almost 4,000 meters deep.
The Victor 6000 is the "main hope" for an underwater rescue operation, Rob Larter, an expert with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS, a Cambridge-based British research body) told reporters.
The surface search area covers 20,000 square kilometers. According to Captain Frederick, "the location of the investigation, 1,450 km east of Cape Cod (on the northeast coast of the United States) and 640 km southeast of St. John's, Newfoundland (in Canada), makes it exceptionally difficult to mobilize large amounts of equipment quickly.
Rescue teams looking for the Titan have deployed two robotic vehicles on the seabed in a new attempt to find it. The lights and cameras that Victor 6000 has on board will allow the team on the surface of the ship to see in real time what is at the bottom of the ocean and it has two mechanical arms capable of even removing debris.
Teams from the US, Canada, France and the UK are involved in the rescue efforts with planes, boats and underwater drones. The deployment of these new vehicles occurs when, theoretically, the oxygen inside the Titan submersible should have run out.
