with videoTime is running out for the five occupants of the submarine Titan, missing since Sunday off the coast of Canada. Around 2 p.m. Dutch time, there is a good chance that the oxygen in the submarine has run out. If the five have not already suffocated due to too much CO2 in the cabin, or due to an accident. The submarine has still not been found.
Foreign editors
Latest update:
09:58
The Titan had been on its way to the passenger ship Titanic, which had sunk in 1912, at a depth of 3,800 meters in the Atlantic Ocean since 2:00 PM Dutch time on Sunday afternoon. After an hour and a half, contact with the occupants ceased. What exactly went wrong is still unclear. According to the company running the expedition, OceanGate, oxygen was on board for 96 hours; four full days. They expire Thursday afternoon. The search is therefore a race against time. OceanGate is helping, as are the Canadian and US Coast Guards.
Since Tuesday, the search for the missing sub has focused on an area where sensors have detected ‘banging’. It’s still unclear what kind of thumping that was, but it was heard near where the Titan had run into trouble.
On Thursday morning, the US Coast Guard said that more knocking noises have been heard, but that it is “very difficult” to find out exactly what it is and where it comes from. Each sound is “analyzed and localized,” says Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. If the noise comes from the submarine, there is a chance that the five occupants are still alive.
They are aviation businessman Hamish Harding (58), Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood (48) and his son Suleman Dawood (19), retired French naval commander Paul-Henry Nargeolet (77) and Stockton Rush (61), co-founder of OceanGate.
Experts of the submarines doubt whether the lack of oxygen will be fatal for the five occupants. There is a good chance that the amount of CO2 in the cabin will soon be too high. The carbon dioxide exhaled by the quintet is normally filtered, but the filter can become saturated before the oxygen in the submarine runs out.
OceanGate was founded in 2009 and supplies submersibles for scientific and commercial expeditions, among other things. Tourists pay the equivalent of 230,000 euros per person for a trip with, for example, the Titan, which is equipped for the deepest journeys. OceanGate has successfully completed more than 14 expeditions and more than 200 dives in the Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, according to its own website.
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