The US Coast Guard launched a search and rescue operation for a submersible with five people on board that went missing during an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The military branch received a phone call Sunday informing them the Canadian research ship Polar Prince had lost contact with the underwater vessel and were overdue on checking with their communications, according to Coast Guard spokesperson Lt. Samantha Corcoran.
“Right now, we are just trying to use all efforts and work with international partners to try to get any resources out there to safely locate all five individuals,” she said.
The missing submersible lost contact 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, the Coast Guard said.
A British businessman based in the United Arab Emirates, Hamish Harding, is one of the people on the submersible, according to a social media post by the company he owns, Action Aviation.
“The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving,” the company said in an Instagram post on Sunday.
The five people on board comprised one pilot and four “mission specialists,” the Coast Guard said Monday. In a news conference, Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the Coast Guard’s First District, didn’t identify the five and said authorities still were in the process of contacting family members.
He referred reporters to the group conducting the expedition, OceanGate Expeditions, for information about what the term “mission specialist” entails.
The vessel is designed with 96 hours of rescue or emergency capability, Mauger said. US and Canadian assets are searching the surface and using sonar to scan the water underneath for signs of the submersible. The water is 13,000 feet deep in the area, which is 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Mauger said.
OceanGate is assisting in the search and said it is “exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”
“Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families. We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible,” the group said. “We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
Chief Mi’sel Joe of Miawpukek First Nation, which co-owns the Polar Prince, the support vessel on the expedition, said he received a call Sunday afternoon alerting him the sub was two hours overdue and still hadn’t surfaced, and they had lost communication with the sub. At that point, requests for search and rescue had gone out, he said.
OceanGate Expeditions operates a trip taking passengers to the Titanic’s wreckage at the bottom of the ocean for prices starting at $250,000, according to an archived version of its website, accessible via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
“Follow in Jacques Cousteau’s footsteps and become an underwater explorer — beginning with a dive to the wreck of the RMS Titanic. This is your chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary,” the website said. “Become one of the few to see the Titanic with your own eyes.”
The eight-day expedition is based out of St. John’s, Newfoundland and begins with a 400-nautical-mile journey to the wreck site. There, up to five people, including a pilot, a “content expert” and three paying passengers, board a submersible named “Titan” and descend over two hours to the bottom of the ocean to see the Titanic up close.
According to OceanGate, Titan is a 23,000-pound submersible made of carbon fiber and titanium. As a safety feature, the sub uses a “proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system” that analyzes the pressure on the vessel and the integrity of the structure, the company states.
The Titanic infamously hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in April 1912, killing over 1,500 people. The wreckage of the Titanic, discovered in 1985, sits in two parts at the bottom of the ocean nearly 13,000 feet below the surface, southeast of Newfoundland.
Unlike a submarine, a submersible has limited power reserves so it needs a mother ship that can launch and recover it, according to NOAA.
CNN has reached out to authorities in Newfoundland, Canada.
Coast Guard ‘bringing all assets to bear’ in search
A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft and a P-8 Poseidon aircraft with underwater detection capabilities from RCC Halifax are on scene, and a Canadian Coast Guard ship is also heading to the area, Corcoran said.
An expedition participant on board the Polar Prince, the ship that launched the now-missing sub, said they are all “focused on board here for our friends.”
“We have a situation that is now the part of a major Search and Rescue effort, being undertaken by major agencies,” Rory Golden wrote on Facebook after being contacted by CNN. “That is where our focus is right now.”
He asked people not to ask for or speculate on the names of those on the missing sub.
“I have seen some comments already on social media that are highly inappropriate and insensitive,” he said. He added their online and internet options were being restricted “to keep bandwidth available for the coordinated effort that is taking place.”
“The reaction and offers of help globally is truly astonishing, and only goes to show the real goodness in people at a time like this,” he said. He ended the post thanking everyone and saying, “… think positive. We are.”
