The U.S. Coast Guard crew from Boston continues to search for the five people on the missing Titanic expedition sub, as they race against the 96-hour oxygen supply deadline to find the submersible about 900 miles off of Cape Cod.
The Coast Guard has until about Thursday morning before that oxygen supply will be up for the five people on board the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince.
The five-person crew on the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince submerged Sunday morning, and the crew lost contact about 1 hour and 45 minutes into the vessel’s dive.
The OceanGate Expeditions sub has a 96-hour oxygen supply if there’s an emergency on board.
“We know there’s about 40 hours of breathable air left,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, of the First Coast Guard District, said during a Tuesday early afternoon press conference from the Coast Guard Base Boston.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the crew and the families and the loved ones,” he said. “We will provide unwavering effort as we continue the search.”
The Coast Guard has been looking for the missing 21-foot submersible about 900 miles off of Cape Cod. The depth of the Titanic expedition dive is 12,800 feet, which is almost 2.5 miles on the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean.
So far, they have searched more than 7,500 square miles, an area that’s larger than the state of Connecticut.
“To date, those search efforts have not yielded any results,” Frederick said early Tuesday afternoon.
He noted the complex nature of the search, with the sub located in a very remote area in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It takes a lot of time to get search assets to the location.
“There is a full-court press effort to get equipment on scene as quickly as we can,” Frederick said.
“As soon as we received the report on Sunday evening, we immediately launched search efforts,” he said. “We flew assets that evening, and we’ve continued constant surface and air assets searches since that point.”
OceanGate Expeditions’ sub has explored the historic Titanic wreck site in the last couple of years. The company’s website states that it will continue to return each year to further document the Titanic and its rate of decay.
“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,” OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement. “We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
OceanGate’s website described the “mission support fee” for this year’s expedition as $250,000 a person.
One of the five people on board the sub is British adventurer Hamish Hardin, who holds three Guinness world records, including the longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel. In March 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo descended to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he went into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
Herald wire services were used in this report.