Robot Subs Scouring Ocean Floor Find Missing Titanic Sub

At least no one appears to have suffered…

It had been a race against time as at least two different robotic subs deployed Thursday to scour the sea floor for the missing Titanic tourist submersible, known as Titan.

Both Canada and France sent their own robot subs to the search.

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) said that the Canadian ship Horizon Arctic had deployed a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) which “reached the sea floor and began its search for the missing sub.”

The sub subsequently discovered a “debris field” near the Titanic wreckage site where the Titan went missing.

It was not immediate clear if the debris field is connected to the missing submersible. However, the Coast Guard confirmed that the debris field was consistent with a catastrophic implosion. The five individuals who vanished Monday along with the Titan as it descended to the Titanic wreck died almost instantly.

If an implosion did occur at the depths of the Titanic, it would've caused the air in the sub to heat up to the temperature of the sun's surface. This would've been followed by a surge of seawater and metal crushing the occupants from all sides of the disintegrating vessel. The incident would be over in a few milliseconds.

The search centered on the area where a Canadian surveillance plane Wednesday reported picking up banging sounds every 30 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, the French robot sub that can dive 3.7 miles (6,000 meters) underwater hoped to also prove crucial in the search for the tourist submersible.

If the deep-sea vessel were found intact, the reported oxygen reserves onboard the Titan were expected to run out Thursday. The French oceanographic vessel L'Atalante arrived over the wreck site early Thursday morning with what many believed was the only hope of rescue – an underwater robot called Victor 6000.

Victor 6000, described by Capt. Jamie Frederick of the USCG as “state of the art”, can dive deeper than other equipment now at the site in the North Atlantic and has arms that can be remotely controlled to cut cables or perform other maneuvres to release a stuck vessel, the operator said.

If found, Victor could've hooked the Titan to a ship using the U.S. Navy's Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS), a lift system designed to recover objects weighing up to 27 tons from depths of 3.7 miles.

Rescuers knew they faced a race against time to find the missing submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic. Observers forecasted the last sips of breathable air would run out momentarily.

Their 96 hours of emergency reserve air onboard was expected to run out Thursday morning but that figure was only an estimate, and some held out hope that the air supply may have been extended by measures taken by the passengers and crew.

In a statement on Facebook, Guillermo Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate, said the group onboard may have extended their life support supplies by “relaxing as much as possible.”

“Today will be a critical day in this search and rescue mission, as the sub's life support supplies are starting to run low,” Sohnlein said.

“I firmly believe that the time window available for their rescue is longer than what most people think,” Sohnlein wrote. “I would encourage everyone to remain hopeful for getting the crew back safely.”

British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were two of the five on board, along with British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding.

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French Navy diver who has explored the Titanic before, was also on the vessel, as was Stockton Rush, chief executive of OceanGate – the firm behind the dive.

The wreckage of the Titanic that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg lies at a depth of about 2.4 miles under the sea.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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