Missing Titanic Sub: Here’s Why Underwater Search And Rescue Missions Are So Tough

Topline

Rescue teams are racing against time to find a submersible vessel in the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday after a tourist sub carrying five people went missing during an expedition to explore the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic on Sunday, a notoriously difficult task that, if successful, would only mark the start of what could be a very challenging rescue operation.

OceanGate’s Titan submersible, pictured here before it went missing on a trip to tour the Titanic.

OceanGate Expeditions

Key Facts

The U.S. Coast Guard said the ship carrying the submersible, named Titan, lost contact approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into its mission to tour the Titanic wreckage, which is around 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Jamie Pringle, a reader in forensic geosciences at Keele University in England, said aquatic searches are “pretty tricky” as oceans are challenging environments to search given their “different stratified levels,” currents and the ocean floor being a lot more “rugged than on land.”

Communication is also much harder and with no tether linking Titan to its support vessel, the only way to communicate with it will be through the sea, said Eric Fusil, an associate professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia and director of the university’s shipbuilding hub.

Communicating through water is very different than communicating through air as water rapidly blocks the propagation of electromagnetic waves, Fusil explained, meaning rescuers have “no radar, no GPS” and no spotlight or laser beams beyond “a few meters.”

While sonar, which uses sound waves to locate or communicate through water, is an option for locating the missing sub, Pringle said a “specialized” technique using a “very narrow beam” would be needed to determine the position of such a small sub at this depth, a process that could take far longer than rescuers have.

What To Watch For

While finding Titan is hard, rescuing it could be even harder. “If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” said Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London. Given its mission, it’s possible Titan may have gone beyond the continental shelf to very deep water. Even if it is still intact, Greig said “there are very few vessels that can get that deep” and divers certainly can’t. Greig said vehicles designed for Navy submarine rescues “certainly can’t get down to anywhere near the depth of the Titanic.” Even if they could, “I very much doubt that they could attach to the hatch of the tourist submersible,” Greig added.

Crucial Quote

“The clock is ticking,” Fusil said. Any submariner or submersible deep divers “know how unforgiving” such environments are, Fusil added. “Going undersea is as, if not more, challenging than going into space from an engineering perspective.”

News Peg

Titan is operated by tour firm OceanGate Expeditions of Everett, Washington, and among the five people believed to be onboard during the dive is aviation mogul Hamish Harding. Conditions on the vessel are reportedly cramped—there are no seats—and is apparently built to a pared-back design, including a control likened to a games console controller. It usually dives with a four-day emergency supply of oxygen, giving rescuers a very limited window with which to work.