The missing Titanic submersible with five people onboard including British billionaire Hamish Harding could be stuck in the wreckage of the Titanic that it was diving to explore - an official has admitted.
The vessel, which operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was taking a crew of five people including company CEO Stockton Rush, French explorer PH Nargeolet and Harding to the historic site as part of it's $250,000 tour.
The crew launched at around 4am yesterday but lost communication with the mothership a short while afterwards. According to OceanGate's website, the sub can last for up to 96 hours underwater with five people consuming oxygen.
Tonight Rear Admiral John Mauger, who is helping coordinate the search, said the US Coast Guard is working “as hard as possible” to find the submersible.
He conceded the craft may be tangled in the wreckage of the Titanic.
“We're working as hard as possible, bringing all assets to bear to try and find the submersible. We were notified on Sunday afternoon,” said Mauger.
“We began immediately to mobilise assets to search both the surface of the water, search from the air, and to detect any vessels under the water as well. "We've had a comprehensive search to find these people.
“A frantic marine search is underway for a missing tourist submersible which has not been seen since it launched to take five people to the Titanic wreckage”.
He said the rescue mission was “very complicated,” given how far out at sea the sub is.
The wreckage is 370 miles from Newfoundland in Canada but is in US waters.
The Coast Guard in Boston is coordinating the search for it.
Rear Admiral Mauger conceded it may have become stuck in the wreckage and said the Coast Guard does not have the capabilities to reach it if that's the case.
He added: “We don't have equipment onsite that can do a survey of the bottom. There is a lot of debris so locating will be difficult.
“We don't have the capabilities at this time. Right now, we're focused on trying to locate it.”
The expedition was OceanGate's third annual voyage to chronicle the deterioration of the iconic ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew.
Since the wreckage's discovery in 1985, it has been slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria, and some have predicted the ship could vanish in a matter of decades as holes yawn in the hull and sections disintegrate.
The initial group of tourists was funding the expedition by spending anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 apiece.
The latest trip was scheduled to depart from St. John's, Newfoundland, in early May and finish up at the end of June, according to a court documents filed by the company in April with a U.S. District Court in Virginia that presides over Titanic matters.
Unlike submarines that leave and return to port under their own power, submersibles require a ship to launch and recover them. OceanGate hired the Canadian vessel Polar Prince, a medium duty icebreaker that was formerly operated by the Canadian Coast Guard, to ferry dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site.
The 5-person submersible, named Titan, is capable of diving 4,000 meters or 13,120 ft. "with a comfortable safety margin," OceanGate said in its filing with the court.
It weighs 20,000 pounds (9,072 kilograms) in the air, but is ballasted to be neutrally buoyant once it reaches the seafloor, the company said.
The Titan is made of "titanium and filament wound carbon fiber" and has proven to "withstand the enormous pressures of the deep ocean," OceanGate stated. OceanGate told the court that Titan's viewport is "the largest of any deep diving submersible" and that its technology provides an "unrivaled view" of the deep ocean.
Chris Parry, a retired navy rear admiral from the U.K., told Sky News that the rescue taking place was "a very difficult operation."
""The actual nature of the seabed is very undulating. Titanic herself lies in a trench. There's lots of debris around. So trying to differentiate with sonar in particular and trying to target the area you want to search in with another submersible is going to be very difficult indeed."
