A deep-sea explorer says it would take a "miracle" to rescue those trapped on board the Titan submersible that has gone missing on a dive to the wreck of Titanic. Time is rapidly running out for the search and rescue operation in the North Atlantic, with the sub having just hours of oxygen left.
The sub, which had five people on board, lost contact with its mothership on Sunday. Since then, a major operation to locate it has been launched, but time is running out. Noises heard by rescuers have given some hope.
Dr Gallo told Good Morning Britain: "Maybe two days ago my hope was sliding downward rapidly, but then these noises appeared and there seems to be very credible sources there, credible and repeatable. We'll see how that pans out but everything is happening very quickly, so we have a race against time.
"Our hopes are high. We need a miracle at this point, but miracles do happen, so I'm very optimistic.
"In this case, the noises are repetitive, every half hour I believe. Three different aircraft heard them in their sensors at the same time and it went on for two days-plus.
"It's still going on apparently. There's not a lot in the natural world we can think of that would do that every 30-minute cycle.
"We have to, at this point, assume that that's the submarine and move quickly to that spot, locate it and get robots down there to verify that is where the submarine is. They've got to go fully ready as if that was the sub because it takes a while to locate it and get it up to the surface, it takes hours."