Hyderabad: Rescuers are racing against time as a mad search is underway to find the Titanic tourist submersible which has gone missing on June 18 in the Atlantic Ocean with five people aboard.
As time ticks away, anxiety grows for the safety of five eminent people on board. They include British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, his 19-year-old son Sulaiman Dawood and Stockton Rush, the founder of OceanGate Expeditions.
The anxiety of the rescuers is getting intensified as Titan is equipped with a four-day emergency oxygen supply which set to exhaust soon, officials said. The watercraft was inundated by its support vessel, the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince. The vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, lost contact around an hour and 45 minutes after submerging on Sunday morning, June 18, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard corroborated that life support of a maximum of 96 hours is left at that point. OceanGate offers eight-day missions to see the Titanic debris at a cost of $250,000 per person. The sudden disappearance has set off a mad search engaging OceanGate which is “exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely.”
The US Coast Guard and Canadian Coast Guard are also involved in rescue efforts. The Titanic sits 3,800m (12,500ft) beneath the surface at the bottom of the Atlantic. It is about 600km (370 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland.
David Gallo, senior advisor for Stategic Initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc., told CNN on Tuesday that it's a race against time to track down the submersible considering the depth and paucity of time. "Certainly, time is against us at this point," he was quoted as saying by CNN. "The only thing that we can say is that everything that can be done is being done," he summed up. Titanic, the largest ship of its time, hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew onboard, more than 1,500 died.
