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Search-and-rescue vessels from several countries crisscrossed a swath of the North Atlantic in the sky and on the water Wednesday, hoping to locate a missing submersible that carried five people and enough oxygen to last until Thursday morning.
The task was huge: Finding a craft the size of a minivan in an area twice the size of the state of Connecticut and up to 2½ miles deep.
The search was stepped up Wednesday in one area where Canadian planes detected what Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution described as “banging noises.” Analysts have not yet figured out what was making those noises.
Among the growing collection of search vehicles were P-3 and C-130 aircraft patrolling the skies; five “surface assets,” including ships, on top of the water; and two unmanned remote-operated vehicles (ROVs) that are like underwater drones, said Capt. Jamie Frederick, response coordinator for the First Coast Guard District. More ROVs, at least five more surface assets and a hydraulic crane are headed to the area, he said.
The submersible, named Titan, carried a pilot and four tourists toward the wreckage of the Titanic, which rests 12,500 feet below the surface on the ocean floor about 900 miles off Cape Cod.
Titan, piloted by Stockton Rush, the CEO of underwater expedition company OceanGate Expeditions, began its roughly two-hour descent at 8 a.m. Sunday. It last contacted the Canadian research ship Polar Prince about an hour and 40 minutes into its dive. It was supposed to have resurfaced at 3 p.m., according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The submersible could be bobbing on the surface, floating somewhere in the water column or resting on the ocean floor.
Depending on where it is, the search-and-rescue mission could be the deepest ever attempted.
One of the deepest rescue missions took place in 1973, when two British sailors trapped in a 6-foot submersible were towed out of a 1,575-foot abyss 150 miles off the coast of Ireland.
In 2022, the Navy hoisted the wreckage of an F-35 fighter jet from a depth of about 12,400 feet in the South China Sea during a 37-day mission.
Sources: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), OceanGate, Guinness World Records, Natural History Museum of London
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