The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that an underwater vessel has located a debris field near the Titanic in the search for a missing submersible with five people aboard, a potential breakthrough in an increasingly urgent around-the-clock effort.
The Coast Guard’s post on Twitter gave no details, such as whether officials believe the debris is connected to the Titan, which was on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
The search passed the critical 96-hour mark Thursday when breathable air could have run out. The Titan was estimated to have about a four-day supply of breathable air when it launched Sunday morning in the North Atlantic — but experts have emphasized that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers have taken measures to conserve breathable air. And it’s not known if they survived since the sub’s disappearance.
Coast Guard announces press briefing at 3pm ET to discuss debris field found by ROV near Titanic
A rescue expert says the debris found in the search for Titan was "a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible".
David Mearns, who is friends with two of the passengers on board Titan, says he is part of a WhatsApp group involving The Explorers Club.
Mr Mearns told Sky News the president of the club, who is "directly connected" to the ships on the site, said to the group: "It was a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible."
Mr Mearns says: "Again this is an unconventional submarine, that rear cover is the pointy end of it and the landing frame is the little frame that it seems to sit on."
He says this confirms that it is the submersible.
Mr Mearns says he knows both British billionaire Hamish Harding and the French sub pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
"It means the hull hasn't yet been found but two very important parts of the whole system have been discovered and that would not be found unless its fragmented," he added.
Mr Mearns also spoke about the fairing of the submarine - shaped like a fishtail - and said: "If the faring is off and the frame is off - then something really bad has happened to the entire structure."
"On the news that we have yet, they haven't found the hull of which the men are inside."
2:38 PM E.S.T.
Update from CNN:
Debris found in search area has been assessed to be from the external body of the Titan sub.
The debris discovered within the search area of the missing Titanic submersible has been assessed to be from the external body of the sub, according to a memo reviewed by CNN. The search for the crew capsule of the Titan vessel continues, the memo says.
The debris was located on the ocean floor, roughly 500 meters off of the bow of the Titanic, and it was located around 8:55 a.m. ET.
Fully expected this outcome, but it's still sad to read all jokes aside. Sounds like rapid implosion from the extreme pressures is what occurred which, to me, is way better than suffocating to death at the bottom of the ocean. My best guess is a failure of the acrylic viewport.
Agreed. It sounds like both the viewport — its manufacturer wouldn't guarantee it past 1,800m the way they had it installed — and the hull itself were both potential liabilities.
I hope they nail the CEO to the wall, frankly. [edit: okay, maybe posthumously] The more info comes out, the more this disaster looks entirely foreseeable. He refused to have the sub certified despite being warned of potentially catastrophic results, fired his own director of marine operations for blowing the whistle on serious safety risks, and is on the record denouncing regulations for tourist subs for having, quote, "needlessly prioritized passenger safety".
Honestly - I think an instant implosion would be preferrable to the alternative to waiting in the tiny sub for your oxygen to run out for several days..
Not as good as being rescued, obviously, but still - better a quick death than a lingering horror
Yes this been a body retrieval from the start was never a rescue operation. The media going on and on about the air was BS. Sucks but maybe in future shit like this can be avoided by making mandatory for any sub to go through regulations.
Unfortunately, and I'm not trying to be morbid here, rapid decompression works on human bodies similarly to vessels and there won't be anything to recover.
RIP to the most hilariously ill-concieved submersible ever spawned by man's hubris. A figure not without controversy, but even it's most ardent critics must admit it went out with a bang.
Um yeah just read about it after your comment, it sank and killed its test crew, then returned to service and sank the second crew which included the inventor, and then once again put into service and sank for a 3rd crew. 21 people in total!
We learnt from MH370 that there is a lot of noises in the ocean that are plausible for what you’re looking for but not what you’re actually looking for. The ocean is a noisy place and it’s getting much louder as well over time.
Putin's probably up there on the list, but I'm also not gonna go off the word of the guy who's country has "killing the jew" holiday celebrations in church
The post is so vague that it makes me think that they found one of the Titanic's debris fields and not one of the tiny sub. It's about the size of a van. It can hardly explode into what I would call a debris field.
If it burst and imploded let's say, 1,000 feet down, by the time the pieces all settled that could make a pretty big field given it had 12,000 to go. I don't know what the rate of descent was but even at 6,000 feet, that's a wide area to spread the sub's pieces around.