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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Entertainment
Susan Knox

Titanic wreck diver breaks down as he says missing explorers are 'buried alive in tin can'

This Morning viewers found themselves wiping away tears after Thursday's instalment of the ITV programme as a Titanic wreckage dive veteran broke down in tears over the missing submarine.

While speaking to hosts Holly Willoughby and Dermot O'Leary this morning, the visibly emotional diving veteran said the five passenger onboard the missing Titan submarine visiting the wreckage of HMS Titanic will feel like they are being 'buried alive in a tin can' as the search for them continues.

"You lose track of time down there, but it was somewhere between a half hour and an hour but it seemed like an eternity," he shared.

"Because every minute you're down there, that you're stuck, and you're literally buried alive in a tin can. There's no other way to put it. You're not buried alive in the ground, you're buried alive in the water.

The veteran diver broke down in tears (ITV)

"Time just stretched out for an eternity, you lose all sense of time.

"It was somewhere between a half hour and an hour that we finally sensed that something had happened, and then we were safe."

The veteran diver went on to say that he truly feels empathy for the five passengers on board because he knows exactly what they will be feeling at this moment.

"I have so much empathy. And to be honest I feel guilty talking about this today, because I was saved, but these people won't be," he said before he broke down in tears.

The Titan submarine lost all contact with its ship on Sunday, sparking a global frenzy and rescue effort to find those onboard.

It's believed that three Brits are among the five passengers trapped on board the OceanGate Expeditions vessel which will reportedly run out of oxygen supplies later today.

A previous explorer has revealed that when he did the same journey as the missing five passengers, he thought his life was over when complications took place on his journey undersea.

Holly and Dermot also became emotional (ITV)

The diving veteran said that he is one of the only people on the planet who knows exactly how the five passengers would be feeling right now as the search continues before their oxygen runs out.

Contact with the small submarine was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive, and the passengers will only have Oxygen until Thursday at 11am, after which it will run out.

The trip, which is thought to cost £195,000 per head, launched at 4am on Sunday, but communications disappeared less than two hours into the descent to the Titanic wreck site - which sits about 3,800m (12,500ft) below sea level at the bottom of the ocean around 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland but in US waters.

The missing submarine was designed with a 96 hour 'emergency capability', Rear Admiral John Mauger, who is leading the rescue mission, announced at a press conference this evening - meaning there was enough oxygen in the vessel until around midday today.

There had been fears that the submersible, named Titan, could have been stuck in the wreckage of the Titanic that it was diving to explore.

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.

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