US Coast officials racing against time to find the missing Titanic expedition submersible said on Wednesday that rescuers spotted mystery objects on the ocean’s surface.
With less than 24 hours of oxygen available, five people aboard the Titan tourist sub remain missing amid frantic searches for any indication that the device is still intact.
During a press briefing on Wednesday evening, Captain Jamie Frederick with the US Coast Guard revealed that helicopters flying over the ocean southwest of Newfoundland have spotted objects floating on the surface.
Mr Frederick emphasised that efforts are still very much focused on a search and rescue mission and that his team has not found any evidence that the submersible imploded. Instead, he noted, the objects spotted by search crews were most likely not linked to the submersible.
“In search and rescue missions, when aircraft are flying continuously ... there is stuff out in the ocean floating,” Mr Frederick said. “We went back, we looked at it. We didn’t determine it to be debris, it didn’t correlate with the case ... it is not uncommon during an active search.”
Elsewhere in the press conference, Mr Frederick addressed reports that Canadian sonar equipment has picked up banging noises from an area where the Titan could potentially be stranded. Following those developments, other equipment used in the search was relocated to focus on that specific portion of the ocean.
Mr Frederick warned that while he remained hopeful, he couldn’t confirm what the noises below the surface were.
“It is very difficult to discern what the sources of those noises are, at times,” Carl Hartsfield with the Oceanographic Systems Laboratory said. “... But I can tell you that this team has multiple sensors, they’re sending back data expeditiously to the best in the world, they’re feeding the results back to the team, and they’re making decisions.”
The noises, which appeared to be “man-made to the untrained ear,” were heard again on Wednesday, Mr Hartsfield said.
Five vessels are searching a 10,000sqm area for any sign of the OceanGate Expeditions submersible, which lost contact with its support ship less than two hours into its dive. The location of the search site 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod had made it “difficult to mobilise large amounts of equipment quickly,” Mr Frederick said.
However, the French ship Atalante carrying the Victor 6,000 underwater (ROV) and winch — the only one capable of reaching the Titanic wreck 4,000m under the ocean surface — is only expected to reach the search site on Wednesday night.
OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood were onboard the submersible vessel when it lost contact with support ship Polar Prince on Sunday.
It’s believed the submersible had “limited rations” of food and water, Captain Frederick said. Oxygen levels were just “one piece of data” being analysed, he added.
