A five-person crew on a submersible named Titan, submerged on a dive to the Titanic wreckage site Sunday morning and has since then gone missing.
“We will do everything in our power to effect a rescue as there is a full-court press effort to get equipment on the scene as quickly as we can,” Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick told reporters during a news conference Tuesday afternoon, calling the search effort “an incredibly complex operation.”
The submarine was lost in an area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, in the North Atlantic, in water with a depth of about 13,000 feet. It had less than 40 hours of breathable air left as of Tuesday evening.
Among the confirmed passengers are British businessman Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son, Suleman; and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet. Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company that operates the vessel, is also on it.
It was said that those on the trip set the trip as an opportunity to “become one of the few to see the Titanic with their own eyes.”
A fee of $250,000 was said to be paid to secure a seat on the vessel. In 2018, leaders within the submersible industry sent a letter to The CEO of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, urging caution and highlighting the risks associated with OceanGate’s experimental approach. They stressed that the company’s unconventional methods could lead to various problems, with potential outcomes ranging from minor issues to devastating consequences. The concerns raised in the letter underscore the serious nature of the risks involved in OceanGate’s deep-sea exploration endeavours.
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