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Search Day 4: Titan submersible debris found, all onboard presumed dead

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All five people aboard the Titan submersible are believed to be dead, and debris discovered in the search area was consistent with a "catastrophic implosion," the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The debris was found off the bow of the sunken Titanic, officials said.

The search for the Titan, which went missing Sunday after it e mbark ed on a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic , had been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected "underwater noises" Tuesday and again yesterday.

U.S. Coast Guard officials had estimated the five passengers could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET today, and the location of the missing vessel had remained a mystery even as the search intensified.

What to know about the search for the Titan

• The debris found at the seafloor was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," the Coast Guard said.
• The Coast Guard said today that a "debris field" had been found in the search area.
• The submersible disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, which is 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
• A sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the a senior U.S. Navy official said. The sound was not definitive, the official said.
• Those on board have been identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission; British billionaire Hamish Harding, the owner of Action Aviation; French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

White House offers condolences to families of Titan victims

The Associated Press

The White House offered its condolences to the families mourning the five people killed aboard the Titan submersible.

U.S. Coast Guard officials announced their deaths Thursday following the vessel’s catastrophic implosion in the North Atlantic.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan,” the White House said in a statement. “They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.”

The statement also thanked the searchers, including the Coast Guard, involved in the international effort to find the submersible.

“This has been a testament to the skill and professionalism that the men and women who serve our nation continue to demonstrate every single day,” the statement said.

David Pogue on the misinformation and misunderstandings swirling around the Titanic sub

Kat Tenbarge

Tech journalist and “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent David Pogue, who observed an OceanGate Expeditions Titanic shipwreck trip last year, the last before the Titan disappeared this week, said a “massive amount of misinformation” has circulated online this week.

In an interview, Pogue, whose  coverage  of the submersible last year has attracted renewed interest in light of the disaster, also responded to attacks on his reporting over the past two days.

Critics on Twitter have suggested that Pogue and other journalists undersold how dangerous the submersible was or even that he conspired to shield the company from accountability. 

Pogue countered that the safety issues were the “centerpiece” of his OceanGate coverage. “There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the deep-sea diving industry process,” he said. 

Read the full story here.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet 'knew the risks that were possible with this expedition,' stepson says

Tim Stelloh

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Navy veteran who died aboard the Titan, was “fearless” and understood the potential danger of traveling to the Titanic's wreckage, his stepson said in an interview.

"Anyone who gets into those submersibles knows the risks that could happen," stepson John Paschall said, adding: "Going into this, he knew the risks that were possible with this expedition."

Paschall described Nargeolet, who had led several expeditions to the sunken passenger ship and supervised the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, as “the world expert on the Titanic.”

The ocean, Paschall said, was Nargeolet’s “home away from home. He was just so comfortable out there and in any ocean and any lake or whatever it was. The water was just so connected to him.”

“And that especially goes for the Titanic,” Paschall said. “He put so much of his life into that ship.”

Paschall also recalled Nargeolet as a “really incredible stepfather” — someone who was respectful, loving and funny. 

While Nargeolet knew the risks of traveling in a submersible, Paschall said, he wanted to know more about how the company that operated the boat, OceanGate, had maintained the vessel and whether it had kept passengers properly informed.

“Were all the safety procedures followed as closely as possible?” Paschall said. “Was everyone aware of everything that was going on? Was there anything that was missed during any kind of inspection?”

19-year-old Titan passenger was ‘terrified’ before trip, his aunt says

Daniel Arkin

In the days before the Titan vessel  went into the ocean  off Newfoundland, Canada, the 19-year-old university student accompanying his father on the expedition expressed hesitation about going, his aunt said in an interview Thursday.

Azmeh Dawood — the older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood — said her nephew, Suleman, informed a relative that he “wasn’t very up for it” and felt “terrified” about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

But he ended up going aboard  OceanGate’s 22-foot submersible  because the trip fell over Father’s Day weekend and he was eager to please his dad, who was passionate about the lore of the Titanic, Azmeh Dawood said.

'We will miss him today and every day,' Paul-Henri Nargeolet's family say

Phil Helsel

The family of French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet say they will remember him for the rest of their lives after he and four other people died in the Titan submersible accident.

Nargeolet was an “extraordinary father and husband,” the family said.

"He is a man who will be remembered as one of the greatest deep-sea explorers in modern history. When you think of the Titanic and all we know about the ship today, you will think of Paul-Henri Nargeolet and his legendary work," they said in a statement.

The statement added: "But what we will remember him most for is his big heart, his incredible sense of humor and how much he loved his family. We will miss him today and every day for the rest of our lives."

Nargeolet led several expeditions to the Titanic wreckage site, completing at least 35 dives in submersibles and supervising the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, including the recovery of the "big piece" — a 20-ton section of the Titanic’s hull — according to Experiential Media Group, where he was the director of underwater research.

The family thanked everyone involved in the dayslong rescue effort and extended condolences to the families of the others who died.

Hamish Harding remembered as an inspiration

The family of British billionaire Hamish Harding and his company are “united in grief” with the families of four other people all dead in the Titan submersible incident, Action Aviation said in a statement.

“Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply. To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend,” the company said.

Harding, a former pilot and explorer, was inducted as a Living Legend of Aviation last year, Action Aviation said.

Family of father and son killed in submersible ask for prayers

Antonio Planas

The family of the father and son who died in the Titan submersible are asking for prayers and said they found strength in rescue efforts.

Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, were among the five people killed on the submersible that imploded.

“It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood," the family said in a statement released by the Dawood Foundation. "Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”

The family said they were grateful to the people involved in the rescue efforts, saying that "their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time."

"We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues, and well-wishers from all over the world who have stood by us during our hour of need," the statement said. "The immense love and support we receive continues to help us to endure this unimaginable loss.”

The Dawood family also offered condolences to the families of the other people aboard the Titan.

Acoustic 'anomaly' consistent with implosion had been detected, Navy official confirms

Mosheh Gains

Courtney Kube

A U.S. Navy analysis of acoustic data “detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” near the Titan around the time it lost communications, a senior Navy official said.

The sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the official said.

The sound was not definitive, the official said, and it was immediately shared with commanders, who decided to continue searching.

“This information was considered with the compilation of additional acoustic data provided by other partners and the decision was made to continue our mission as a search and rescue and make every effort to save the lives on board,” the Navy official said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the sound had been detected.

'Titanic' director James Cameron sees similarities between sunken ship and submersible

“Titanic” director James Cameron said he was astonished by the similarities between the ship that sank in 1912 and the Titan submersible that imploded with five people aboard.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet, he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result,” Cameron said in an interview with ABC News.

“For a very similar tragedy, where warning signs went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world … it’s just astonishing,” he added. “It’s really quite surreal.”

Cameron said submersible diving is a “mature art” and noted many people in the deep submergence engineering community wrote letters to OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission, pleading that what the company was doing was “too experimental to carry passengers.”

The movie director said one of the passengers aboard the Titan, French dive expert Paul Henry Nargeolet, whom he called “PH,” was a friend he had known for 25 years. He said Nargeolet’s death “is almost impossible for me to process.”

Cameron said he's made 33 dives to the Titanic wreckage site and calculated he's “spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day.”

Cameron’s 1997 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is among the highest-grossing movies of all time, raking in more than $2 billion.

Ocean depth will make recovering bodies from Titanic submersible difficult

'i hope this discovery provides some solace': coast guard's mauger.

Marlene Lenthang

The desperate search for the missing Titan has ended in tragedy after debris from the submersible was found and its five occupants were presumed dead. 

“On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said this afternoon. "I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace, during this difficult time."

He said the unified command has been in contact with Britain and France, as the nations had citizens aboard the vessel. 

5 major pieces of debris led to identification of Titan, officials say

Undersea expert Paul Hanken said five major different pieces of debris told authorities that it was the remains of the Titan. 

“The initial thing we found was the nose cone, which was outside the pressure hull. We then found a large debris field, within that large debris field we found the front end bell of the pressure hull. That was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event,” he said. 

A second, smaller debris field was also found, which included the other end of the pressure hull, “which basically comprised the totality of that pressure vessel,” Hanken said.

Teams on site will continue to map the debris field on the ocean floor. 

Sonar buoys in search did not detect any implosion sounds

It's not clear exactly when the Titan imploded, but Coast Guard officials said that sonar buoys dispatched "did not hear any signs of catastrophic failure."

"This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel which would have generated a significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a news conference today.

Sonar buoys had detected noises in the water Tuesday and yesterday that were being assessed for patterns, but he said today "there doesn't appear to be any connection between the noises and the location [of the debris] on the sea floor."

Debris is consistent with a 'catastrophic implosion' of sub

The debris found at the sea floor was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said.

When asked if it's possible the vessel collided with the Titanic, he said it was found off the bow of the Titanic.

Carl Hartsfield with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said the debris data is consistent with an implosion in the water column.

" It's in an area where there's not any debris of the Titanic, it is a smooth bottom. To my knowledge ... there's no Titanic wreckage in that area and again 200 plus meters from the bow, and consistent with the location of last communication for an implosion in the water column," he said.

Dawood's older sister feels like she's been 'caught in a really bad film'

The older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood feels "absolutely heartbroken" that her brother and her 19-year-old nephew were aboard the Titan vessel.

"I feel very bad that the whole world has had to go through so much trauma, so much suspense," Azmeh Dawood said in a phone interview this afternoon, speaking from the home in Amsterdam she shares with her husband.

"I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to," she said, fighting back tears. "I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them."

Azmeh claimed that her nephew did not want to go on the submarine but agreed to take part in the expedition because it was important to his father, a lifelong Titanic obsessive. Suleman "wasn't very up for it" and "terrified," she claimed, explaining that the 19-year-old expressed his concerns to another family member.

"If you gave me a million dollars, I would not have gotten into the Titan," she said.

Tail cone of Titan found 1,600 feet from bow of the Titanic floor, Coast Guard says

“This morning, an ROV from the vessel Horizon Arctic discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor," Rear Adm. John Mauger, said this afternoon.

Afterward, the ROV found additional debris and it was found to be consistent with the "the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," he said.

The families of the five crew members on board were notified afterward.

OceanGate says those aboard sub have 'sadly been lost'

OceanGate issued a statement moments ago on the status of the sub:

"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.

"This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission.

"We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families. This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea. We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time."

Rush 'got unlucky,' friends say

Elizabeth Chuck

Rush, the OceanGate executive who is on board the missing Titan submersible with four other people, is an intelligent explorer who is adept at managing risk, according to longtime friends.

Rush is "one of the most risk-averse people I know,” said Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate.

Söhnlein said he last spoke with Rush about two weeks before the Titan’s expedition, its third to the Titanic site. Rush did not express any worries about the upcoming voyage.

“If anything, it’s the other way around,” Söhnlein said. “Any explorer will always tell you that on every expedition, on every mission, on every dive, something always goes wrong. You have to anticipate that something is going to go wrong. And the more guides you conduct, the more missions you conduct, the more expeditions you do, the more you start limiting those things.”

Another friend, oceanographer Gregory Stone, said Rush was upfront about the dangers of his missions.

“He wasn’t selling tickets like it was Disneyland. He was telling people exactly what it was — it was a dangerous thing,” Stone said. “He had taken every precaution possible, and he got unlucky. Something happened.”

Pakistani businessman is not a 'risk-taker,' friend says

Dawood, the Pakistani businessman aboard the Titan, is a "quiet and unassuming" person and not a "daredevil" by nature, according to one of his friends.

"I think he would want his legacy and his memory to be one where ... he wouldn't want to be seen as some daredevil, risk-taking explorer," said Bill Diamond, the chief executive of the SETI Institute, a California-based organization that searches for signs of extraterrestrial life. (Dawood is on the group's board of trustees.)

"I think he would want to be remembered as a humble businessman, curious about the world and fascinated by the opportunity to take this excursion and be on this expedition," said Diamond, who spoke to NBC News via Zoom.

Diamond said he believed Dawood would never do anything that would jeopardize the life of his 19-year-old son, Suleman, who is also aboard the Titan.

"I'm sure he would not have brought his son along if he thought this was something seriously dangerous," Diamond said. "I think he knew the risks, at the same time I think he felt that the technology was tried and tested and safe enough."

Coast Guard says 'debris field' found in Titan search area

The Coast Guard said in a tweet at 11:48 a.m. ET that a remotely operated vehicle discovered a "debris field" in the Titan vessel search area.

"Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information," the agency said.

Officials are planning to hold a news briefing at 3 p.m. ET.

Search is a 'needle in a haystack,' expert says

While remaining realistic about the chances of finding the Titan on the vast ocean floor, scientists are still offering a glimmer of hope.

Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, said in London today that it’s incredibly difficult to find an object the size of the Titan in a totally dark environment. He says it’s not going to be found with active sonar from a surface ship, but rather with a towed or autonomous vehicle that’s near the seafloor. Even those vehicles can see just a matter of meters.

“I’ve been involved in searches for hydrothermal vent sites,” he said. “We’ve had the vehicles just a few tens of meters away and missed them and then come back and find them. So it really is, you know, literally it’s just a needle in a haystack situation unless you’ve got a pretty precise location”

Jamie Pringle, an expert in forensic geosciences at Keele University in the United Kingdom, says the first 24 hours are critical in these kinds of rescue operations and that time period has long passed.

“So there’s always a chance. It’s never zero. But I think obviously the longer the time elapses, the lower the chance of success,” he said.

Larter called it a “desperate situation” buy says you try to stay optimistic as long as possible.

“It’s kind of unimaginable if people are alive, trapped in a submersible with oxygen supplies running down,” he said.

Chance of finding survivors 'close to zero,' retired Navy captain says

Corky Siemaszko

With the trapped Titan passengers likely out of oxygen, David Marquet, a retired Navy captain, said today "the probability is perilously close to zero that we will be able to recover them alive."

The Titan had 96 hours worth of oxygen, he told NBC News' Tom Costello.

"Things generally work up to the design spec, but they don’t somehow magically last beyond the design spec," Marquet said, referring to the oxygen estimates.

Dawood's friend says his death would be 'a tremendous loss for the world'

Ammad Adam met Shahzada Dawood at a United Nations conference in February 2020. Dawood gave a speech about empowering women and girls in Pakistan, and Adam was impressed by his remarks. The two kept in touch over the last three years, striking up a friendship via Facebook.

Adam, 34, is now "praying for a miracle" and hoping that Dawood and the four other passengers aboard the Titan will be found alive.

"I can tell you that Shahzada was a real great gentleman, a fine gentleman," he said. "I know everyone says, 'Oh, such and such is a good person,' but he's actually a genuinely kind-hearted person and you could see that in his actions."

Adam said Dawood dedicated much of his adult life to charitable activity, including donating to Covid relief funds in the early days of the pandemic.

"I hope for a miracle from God," Adam said, "because his death would be a tremendous loss for the world. He tries to help people who need help, and we need more people like that."

Teen trapped in missing sub is U.K. business school student

Henry Austin

The youngest of the five people aboard the missing submersible had just completed his first year at the Strathclyde Business School in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

The University of Strathclyde said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” about Suleman Dawood, 19, “his father and the others involved in this incident.”

“Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones and we continue to hope for a positive outcome,” the statement added.

Weather at site is 'pretty good' for search, marine forecaster says

Julianne McShane

Weather at the scene of the search consists of winds blowing at 14 mph with gusts up to 19 mph, according to a tweet from the Coast Guard , which added that there are 4 to 5 foot swells in the water and the air temperature is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chris Parker, president and chief forecaster at Marine Weather Center , described those conditions as "pretty good," adding that they are mild to moderate for the area, which he said normally experiences higher waves and stronger winds of 30 to 40 knots on the Beaufort Wind Scale .

"An average 30-foot sailboat would be happy in those conditions unless they're going into the wind," he told NBC News of the conditions today.

"Those conditions should not be at all problematic" for the search, he added.

'A lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t,' says Discovery Channel host who tested out the Titan

Josh Gates, the host of Discovery Channel’s "Expedition Unknown," told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday that he tested out the Titan for a possible segment for his show in 2021 and that "a lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t" at the time.

"In the course of going out on Titan and diving down inside of it, it just became clear to us at that time that there was a lot that still needed to be worked out with the sub," he said on "Anderson Cooper 360."

"Ultimately, I just felt by the end of that trip that I just couldn’t get comfortable with Titan at that time. I felt that it needed time to go out and do missions and kind of get into a groove before we were going to go and film with it," Gates added.

Gates said the Titan offers a more comfortable fit inside compared to other submersibles due to the carbon fiber i t is partially made out of , allowing it to be larger than other subs that can only fit two to three people.

"On the one hand you have this incredibly innovative, novel design; on the other hand there are a lot of unknowns," he said of the Titan, adding that it has been “very surreal” and “haunting” to watch the search for the missing submersible.

OceanGate CEO has personal connection to famous Titanic victims

Rush, who developed and piloted the missing sub, had a ''pressing need'' to document the Titanic’s watery graveyard — but he had a personal connection to the wreck, as well.

His wife, Wendy Rush, is a great-great-granddaughter of two of the Titanic’s best-known victims, Isidor and Ida Straus. 

Isidor Straus was the co-owner of the Macy’s department store. His wife, Ida, refused to be separated from him when the Titanic started sinking, giving up her own seat on a lifeboat to stay with him on board. Survivors recount seeing them arm in arm on the ship’s deck as it went down. 

Their fate aboard the Titanic was portrayed in James Cameron’s movie, in which an elderly couple choose to spend their last moments in bed together as water comes rushing onboard. Theirs has been remembered as a '' love story for the ages .''

According to the Straus Historical Society, Wendy Rush is the daughter of Dr. Richard Weil III, who is the son of Richard Weil Jr., a former president of Macy’s New York. Weil Jr. is the son of Minnie Straus, Isidor and Ida’s daughter. 

Wendy Rush, née Weil, married Rush in 1986, according to a New York Times wedding announcement . 

A tale of two disasters: Missing sub captivates the world days after deadly migrant shipwreck

Chantal Da Silva

As  rescuers raced to find  the five people who  vanished after launching a mission  to survey the Titanic, another disaster at sea that’s feared to have  left hundreds of people dead  has been swept from the spotlight.

Last week’s sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy sparked arrests, violent protests and questions about authorities’ failure to act or find a long-term solution to the issue. But many human rights advocates are frustrated that the world seems to have already moved on and that the resources and media attention being dedicated to the Titan rescue efforts far outweigh those for the sunken migrant ship.

“It’s a horrifying and disgusting contrast,” Judith Sunderland, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said in a telephone interview, reflecting on the apparent disparities in resources and media attention on the two crises.

“The willingness to allow certain people to die while every effort is made to save others ... it’s a, you know, really dark reflection on humanity,” she said.

Senior British submariner helps with search

Alexander Smith

The British government said today it has dispatched one of its senior submariners, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Kantharia, to assist with the rescue mission.

Kantharia was already embedded in the U.S. Atlantic submarine fleet and joined the rescue effort Tuesday, a spokesperson for No. 10 Downing St. said by email.

Britain is also providing a Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft to transport equipment involved with the search.

Dawood family says 'sole focus' is on rescue of father and son

Sabrina Dawood, the sister of Shahzada Dawood, 48, one of the five people on board the Titan along with his 19-year-old son, Suleman, told Sky News in a Facebook message yesterday that "the Dawood family’s sole focus is the rescue of our beloved Shahzada and Suleman Dawood."

"We trust that the family will be granted privacy as we deal with this crisis," she said.

She added the family is also "deeply grateful" for news organizations' "constant coverage" of the missing submersible, but that they "are unable to address any questions or comments at the moment."

Searchers will need to 'get very, very lucky' to find sub, expert says

Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England's University of Southampton, laid out in stark terms the daunting task facing those trying to find the cylindrical vessel. "The only way they are going to succeed is to get very, very lucky," he told NBC News by telephone early today.

On land, he explained, officials would have an array of tools at their disposal, from GPS and infrared tech to old-fashioned binoculars. "Underwater, that all goes out of the window," said Boxall, who believes given the extensive search by air that it's unlikely the craft is still bobbing around on the surface.

One way to scour the seabed is to send a robotic submersible down there with a light and a camera. That would be like going to an area twice the size of Connecticut "with a flashlight and just having a look around for something this small — it’s a big, big task,” he said.

Officials are also relying on sonar: bouncing sound off the seabed to create an image of what's down there, a painstaking task that Boxall likened to painting the Golden Gate Bridge "with a child's paintbrush."

If it lost power, the submersible likely drifted down to the seabed, traveling up to 15 miles on strong, deep-ocean currents that take water all the way to Antarctica, he said. Compounding that, this area is "very bumpy" and there is "this great big thing called the Titanic, which sank in the area, scattering all kinds of things far and wide."

Magellan ROV to assist in today's search efforts

The Magellan “working class” remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, will assist in the day’s search , Rear Adm. John W. Mauger of the Coast Guard said on NBC’s “TODAY” show.

A working class ROV has a manipulator arm that can attach to a hull point and potentially lift it off the surface, Explorers Club President Richard Garriott previously told NBC New York in an interview.

The Explorers Club, a society dedicated to scientific exploration and field study that two Titan passengers — Harding and Nargeolet — are part of, previously criticized the Coast Guard for not permitting the use of the Magellan ROV earlier.

Responding to the criticism, Mauger said: “We really had to start from scratch and bring all the capability that was available to bear on this problem,” adding that officials “made decisions to prioritize” what was closest to the site.

Coast Guard will 'continue with the search and rescue efforts'

Rear Adm. John W. Mauger said on the "TODAY" show that the Coast Guard is "going to continue with the search and rescue efforts" throughout the day despite fears of the oxygen supply on the vessel running out.

"We use all available data and information to prosecute those searches but we continue to find particularly in complex cases that peoples' will to live really needs to be accounted for as well," he said.

Mauger added that "teams were working really hard through the night" and that medical personnel were also moving into the site today.

Two more ROVs deployed

The Horizon Arctic, a Canadian-flagged ship, which is helping with the search and rescue mission, has deployed its remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, which is now on the seabed, the Coast Guard said on Twitter .

Meanwhile, the French government-backed vessel L'Atalante is about to deploy its own ROV, Victor 6000, into the ocean, the Coast Guard said .

Coast Guard's estimated time for oxygen running out reached

It's now 7:08 a.m. ET, the time that the Coast Guard estimated the oxygen on the missing submersible could run out.

The exact situation onboard the vessel, which had 96 hours of oxygen when it set off, according to its specs and Coast Guard officials, is not known.

Experts have pointed out that there are a number of variables that could impact the consumption of oxygen onboard.

"There are so many variables," Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England’s University of Southampton, told NBC News. “We have no idea how long they will actually last in terms of oxygen — all that we know is that it’s imminent.”

Social media users tracking marine traffic in search area via satellite

As the search for the submersible stretched into today, some social media users said they were following the effort and tracking marine traffic in the area via satellite.

"Never in my life would I have thought I’d be awake at 2:50am watching ships, on satellite, looking for billionaires stranded in a sub, AT the Titanic in 2023 but here I am refreshing Twitter again," one user tweeted , writing that the person was using the app MarineTraffic .

"I’ve been checking periodically all night," one user responded just after 4:30 a.m. ET.

"Haven’t been able to tear myself away from the computer for days now," another wrote .

The MarineTraffic app announced yesterday it was “making all positional data, including satellite positions, available for free for the Polar Prince in the ongoing search & rescue mission.”

Impossible to know exactly how much oxygen left in sub, expert says

The Coast Guard predicts the oxygen supply on the submersible will run out at around 7:08 a.m. ET today. But it doesn't quite work like that, according to Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England's University of Southampton.

"There are so many variables," Boxall told NBC News. "We have no idea how long they will actually last in terms of oxygen — all that we know is that it's imminent." One of the main factors governing the rate of oxygen consumption is the physical state of those on board. If their bodies start to shut down due to hypothermia, Boxall said, it would mean "they're using a lot less oxygen" — albeit presenting a new danger for the crew.

Although the Coast Guard has presented this timeline, officials know about these variables, according to Boxall. "It's not like" at 7.08 a.m. the rescuers will "pack up their bags and say, 'Right, we'll do a recovery operation, but we're taking the urgency off," he said. "They will still see this as being very urgent for next couple of days."

2 new vessels arrive on scene, conducting search patterns

Two new vessels have arrived on the scene and are conducting search patterns in the bid to find the Titan, a Coast Guard spokesperson said this morning.

The Canadian CGS Ann Harvey and the Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic, a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, arrived to aid in the bid to find the missing submersible, Petty Officer Ryan Noel said.

The Coast Guard had previously said the two vessels were en route to the search site.

Noel said rescuers were also in the process of trying to get “one of the newer ROVs onsite down there." He could not confirm which ROV that was, but said the Coast Guard would be providing updates as more information became available.

Search patterns show more sea scanned in bid to find the Titan

The Coast Guard released a new image yesterday showing search patterns so far as efforts expanded in the race to find the missing sub.

It also released search patterns Tuesday, with the difference depicted below.

Searchers had covered an area twice the size of Connecticut on the surface, and the search underwater is about 2 ½ miles deep, officials said yesterday.

Ex-senior naval officer has 'no optimism' about underwater noises

The search and rescue mission was given fresh hope after a Canadian aircraft detected "underwater noises" on Tuesday and yesterday. But Chris Parry, a former rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, says he isn't greatly encouraged.

"I've got no optimism about that at all," Parry told NBC News. "Put your head in the water, you’re going to hear a lot of mechanical noises, particularly in the vicinity of a disintegrating wreck like the Titanic."

He called the optimism "clutching at straws."

The Titanic brought them together, and a tiny vessel could doom them

The five-person crew rescuers are racing to find went missing after departing on a mission Sunday morning from the Polar Prince, a Canadian research vessel, to survey the Titanic firsthand.

The passengers are now at the center of a much higher-stakes race against the clock — a frantic international search and rescue effort that must succeed before the 22-foot vessel runs out of oxygen this morning.

The passengers are Rush, who lives in Seattle and served as the vessel’s pilot; Harding, a British tycoon who lives in the United Arab Emirates; Dawood and his son, Suleman, scions of a Pakistani business dynasty; and the French mariner and Titanic expert Nargeolet, who has been nicknamed “Mr. Titanic.” 

The men are likely bound together forever, no matter what happens next.

French deep sea robot arrives to join search

Due to join the hunt today was Victor 6000, an undersea robot dispatched by the French government that has the rare ability to dive deeper than the Titanic wreck.

The French research vessel L'Atalante, which is carrying the robot, has now arrived in the same area as other ships involved in the search as of 4 a.m. ET., according to the tracking website Marine Traffic.

Victor 6000 is so named because it can dive to 6,000 meters — some 20,000 feet. That puts the Titanic, 12,500 feet down, easily within its range.

It's familiar territory for Ifremer, the state-run French ocean research institute that operates the robot and was part of the team that first located the Titanic wreck in 1985. The institute dispatched the remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, this week at the request of the U.S. Navy.

It isn't able to lift the missing submersible own its own, but it could hook up the 10-ton carbon-fiber and titanium tube to another ship capable of bringing it to the surface, Olivier Lefort, the head of naval operations at Ifremer, told Reuters. “This is the logic of seafarers. Our attitude was: We are close, we have to go,” he said.

Desperate search for sub as oxygen supply dwindles

The search for the missing submersible grew more frantic this morning, with officials fearing the oxygen supply on the vessel could soon run out.

Coast Guard officials estimated that the Titan, which had a 96-hour oxygen supply, could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET, but the exact situation onboard the vessel, including potential efforts to conserve oxygen, is not clear.

The search for the sub, which went missing Sunday after embarking on a mission to explore the Titanic, has been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected “underwater noises” Tuesday, and again yesterday.

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June 22, 2023 - missing titanic sub crew killed after ‘catastrophic implosion’.

What we covered here

• Catastrophic implosion: The Titanic-bound submersible that went missing on Sunday with five people on board suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing everyone on board, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday. A remotely operated vehicle found the tail cone of the Titan about 1,600 feet away from the bow of the shipwreck, he said.
• Who was on board: Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and Stockton Rush, the CEO of the tour organizer, OceanGate Expeditions, died in the craft .
• About the trip: The submersible was descending to explore the wreckage of the luxury liner, located 900 miles east of Cape Cod and about 13,000 feet below sea level.

Our live coverage of the Titan submersible tragedy has moved here.

"Titanic" director worries implosion will have a negative impact on citizen explorers

Film director James Cameron said Thursday he’s worried that the Titan submersible’s implosion will have a negative impact on citizen explorers.

Some background: Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, which operated the Titan submersible, and who died in the implosion, had spoken about his antipathy to regulations .

“At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Stockton  told journalist David Pogue  in an interview last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything.”

"Titanic" director says news of submersible's implosion did not come as a surprise

James Cameron, director of the hit 1997 film “Titanic,” says news of the Titan submersible’s explosion “certainly wasn’t a surprise.”

Cameron, who has made 33 dives to the wreckage himself, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that when he first heard the news of the Titan incident Monday morning, he connected with his small community in the deep submergence group and found out within about a half-hour that the submersible had lost communication and tracking, simultaneously. 

Cameron said he did more digging and got some additional information that seemed to confirm that the submersible had imploded.

He said false-hopes kept getting dangled as search teams looked for the missing passengers over the following days.

He expressed condolences for the families of the passengers.

Submersible heading to Titanic wreckage suffered "catastrophic implosion." Here's what we know

The five passengers on the Titan submersible that was diving 13,000 feet to view the Titanic on the ocean floor died in a “catastrophic implosion,” authorities said Thursday, bookending an extraordinary five-day international search operation near the site of the world’s most famous shipwreck.

The tail cone and other debris were found by a remotely operated vehicle about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, deep in the North Atlantic and about 900 east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, told reporters.

Here’s what we know:

• Debris: The remotely operated vehicle found “ five different major pieces of debris ” from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy’s director of salvage operations and ocean engineering. The debris was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber ” and, in turn, a “ catastrophic implosion ,” he said. As of now, there does not appear to be a connection between the  banging noises picked up by sonar  earlier this week and where the debris was found.
• Timing: The US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday and relayed that information to the commanders leading the search effort, a senior official told CNN. But the sound was determined to be “not definitive,” the official said. Mauger, for his part, said rescuers had sonar buoys in the water for at least the last 72 hours and had “not detected any catastrophic events.” Listening devices set up during the search also did not record any sign of an implosion, Mauger added.
• What comes next: The remotely operated vehicles will remain on the scene  and continue to gather information, Mauger said. It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the “incredibly complex” case of the Titan’s failure, Mauger said. The Coast Guard official said the agency will eventually have more information about what went wrong and its assessment of the emergency response.
• Response: Mauger applauded the “huge international” and “interagency” search effort. He said teams had the appropriate gea r and worked as quickly as possible. The Coast Guard official also thanked experts and agencies for assisting with the search for the Titan submersible.

• Who was on board: Tour organizer OceanGate Expeditions said Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and  OceanGate CEO  Stockton Rush died in the submersible. They “shared a distinct spirit of adventure,” the company in a statement .
• Reaction: Nargeolet, a French diver, was an incredible person and highly respected in his field , said his friend Tom Dettweiler, a fellow ocean explorer. The president of The Explorers Club said the group is heartbroken over the tragic loss. Two passengers, businessman Harding and Nargeolet, were members, it said. Engro Corporation Limited, of which Shahzada Dawood was Vice Chairman, said the company grieves the loss of him and his son. The governments of Pakistan and the United Kingdom also offered condolences .

White House thanks Coast Guard and international partners for search efforts

The White House thanked the US Coast Guard and international partners for their search and rescue efforts for the submersible that went missing on its way to the Titanic wreckage.

Earlier Thursday, the Coast Guard thanked experts and agencies from all over the world for assisting in the effort, calling it a “huge international” and “interagency” search.

The White House spokesperson also expressed sympathy for the families of the five passengers onboard the submersible.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan. They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers,” the spokesperson said.

Passengers lost in the "catastrophic implosion" of the Titan submersible remembered by loved ones

The Titan submersible bound for the Titanic that went missing on Sunday with five people on board suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday.

Now those who knew the passengers are grappling with their tragic loss and some have sent messages of condolences as their legacies are remembered.

Engro Corporation Limited, where Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood was vice chairman, issued a statement on the deaths of Dawood and his son Suleman — who were among the five people on board the Titan submersible .

Dubai-based Action Aviation, the company owned by passenger Hamish Harding released a statement on behalf of his family.

“Today, we are united in grief with the other families who have also lost their loved ones on the Titan submersible,” the statement read. “Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply. To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend.”

The statement went on to praise the efforts made to search for the Titan sub.

“We know that Hamish would have been immensely proud to see how nations, experts, industry colleagues and friends came together for the search, and we extend our heartfelt thanks for all their efforts. On behalf of the Harding family and Action Aviation, we would like to politely request privacy at this incredibly difficult time,” it said.

The family of French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet said he will “be remembered as one of the greatest deep-sea explorers in modern history.”

The statement signed by Nargeolet’s children and wife said that they hope people think about Paul-Henri and his work when they think about the Titanic, “but what we will remember him most for is his big heart, his incredible sense of humor and how much he loved his family. We will miss him today and every day for the rest of our lives.”

His stepson, John Paschall, described him as an “incredible stepfather” and someone who was caring and had a great sense of humor. He recalled how his mother and Nargeolot drove across the country to attend his college graduation in 2014 after their flight got canceled.

US Navy detected implosion on Sunday and relayed information to search efforts, official says

The US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday in the general area where the Titan submersible was diving in the North Atlantic when it lost communication with its support ship, according to a senior Navy official.

The Navy immediately relayed that information to the on-scene commanders leading the search effort, the official said Thursday, adding that information was used to narrow down the area of the search.

But the sound of the implosion was determined to be “not definitive,” the official said, and the multinational efforts to find the submersible continued as a search and rescue effort.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report about the acoustic signature picked up by the Navy.

Audio of the implosion was picked up by a network of sensors as part of an underwater Navy acoustic listening system, said the official, who declined to go into more detail about the secret system. The network of sensors allowed the Navy to zero-in on a possible location of the noise, providing search teams with a more refined area. 

The Navy also helped analyze the audio signatures of banging and other acoustic data that were heard throughout the search efforts. Those were likely some form of natural life or sounds given off by other ships and vessels that were part of the search effort, the official said.

Expert describes how robots and other machinery will help recover Titan wreckage

A single vessel, if properly equipped, and remotely controlled vehicles on the seafloor would likely be capable of recovering the wreckage of the Titan submersible, Capt. Mark Martin, a salvage master and deep submergence pilot, said Thursday.

The ship would need a crane with a wire that can reach a depth of 4,000 meters (about 2 and a half miles), which can be found on many vessels involved in offshore gas and oil construction, Martin said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.

Recovery crews will also need one or two remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, which have already played a key role in the search for signs of Titan, the captain said. The ROVs are large, powerful machines that can be controlled from the vessel above them.

The ROVs will work in concert with the crane to scoop pieces of the sub into large “recovery baskets,” which Martin said look like half of a shipping container made of mesh.

ROVs will pick up pieces with their arms and move them into baskets, or help attach pieces to straps for the crane, which will lift pieces to the surface, he said.

Director James Cameron says he sees similarities between Titanic wreck and submersible tragedy

James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 film “Titanic” and has made 33 dives to the wreckage, said he saw some similarities between the Titan traged y and the sinking of the famous ship it was bound for.

He added, “And with a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

Pakistan and UK governments offer condolences to families killed in Titan submersible

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry sent condolences to the Dawood family after OceanGate announced they believe all the individuals on the Titan submersible have been lost .

Prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were among the five people in the submersible.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also expressed his condolences and said in a tweet that the United Kingdom is closely supporting the families of those who died.

CNN’s Sugam Pokharel and Jessie Gretener contributed reporting to this post.

OceanGate co-founder calls Titan's catastrophic failure a tragic loss

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein responded to news of the loss of the Titan crew , including CEO Stockton Rush calling it tragic, during an interview Thursday with CNN.

CNN has previously reported that two former employees, who were not engineers, raised safety concerns about the thickness of the Titan’s hull years ago when it was built.

Söhnlein defended Rush’s approach to designing and deploying Titan and said he was not a “risk taker,” he was a “risk manager.” Sohnlein said he had “complete faith” in Rush and would have gone on the Titanic expedition had he had the chance.

“We won’t know anything until the investigation is complete and all the data is collected, so I’ll reserve judgment on that,” Söhnlein said. “But I’ve known him for 15 years and none of this would change my mind.”

Söhnlein said he hasn’t had an operational role in the company for the last decade, but does have a minority ownership stake and has remained in touch with Rush.

President of The Explorers Club says he's heartbroken over tragic loss of individuals on Titan

The president of The Explorers Club said the group is heartbroken over the tragic loss of the individuals on the Titan vessel on Thursday.

“Our friends and fellow Explorers Club members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet are lost, along with Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, while trying to reach the RMS Titanic,” President Richard Garriott de Cayeux said in a statement.

He thanked the many groups involved in the search and rescue mission and the many others around the world “who have mobilized personnel and resources to support the search and rescue.”

He said both Harding and Nargeolet were “drawn to explore” to try to advance science and “for the betterment of mankind.” Garriott de Cayeux added that Rush, who was the CEO and chairman of OceanGate who operated the Titan, was a friend of the club and gave lectures at its headquarters.

“While we did not know Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman personally, their desire to explore as a family would have led them to our doorstep at some point in their futures, where we would have welcomed them,” he said.

Department of Defense says OceanGate loss is "very sad" and it will support Coast Guard's efforts

A Defense Department spokesperson said it is “very sad to hear” about the statement by OceanGate that it believes the individuals on the company’s submersible have been lost.

“I was not tracking that statement, so breaking news here in the briefing room and very sad to hear that,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder after CNN’s Natasha Bertrand informed him of the statement at a press briefing.

Ryder said the Defense Department’s focus would be “on supporting the Coast Guard and their efforts as we go forward.”

Here's a map of the area where the Titan sub went missing off Canada's coast

The Titan submersible — now believed to have suffered a “catastrophic implosion” that killed five people on board — had originally embarked on a journey into the depths of the sea off Canada’s coast.

Titan’s ultimate destination was the Titanic’s wreckage , which sits at the bottom of the ocean nearly 13,000 feet below the surface southeast of Newfoundland.

As authorities now seek to better understand what went wrong with the sub, they’re dealing with an “incredibly complex operating environment on the sea floor, over two miles beneath the surface,” a US Coast Guard official said Thursday.

Here’s a look at a map of the area:

Coast Guard says it had the "right gear" to assist search for Titan submersible

US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said teams had the appropriate gear in the search effort for the Titan submersible.

He reiterated the capabilities of the Pelagic remotely operating vehicle used as of Thursday morning.

A spokesperson for Pelagic Research Services confirmed to CNN that its ROV, which was the first to conduct a search for the submersible on the sea floor, found the debris field .

“So we really had the right gear on-site and worked as swiftly as possible to bring all of the capabilities that we had to bear to this search and rescue effort,” Mauger said.

He called it a “huge international” and “interagency” effort.

A friend of the French diver on board the missing sub remembers him as an incredible person and accomplished

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and one of the passengers on the Titan submersible, was an incredible person and highly respected in his field, said his friend Tom Dettweiler, a fellow ocean explorer.

Nargeolet had a distinguished career as a naval officer and worked in many French programs for undersea exploration, Dettweiler said.

The Titanic had become an important part of Nargeolet’s life, he said, adding: “I don’t think he would consider it a necessarily bad place to be buried.”

Vessels and medical personnel at search site to be demobilized in next 24 hours

Authorities will begin to demobilize the medical personnel and nine vessels involved in the Titanic submersible search over the course of the next 24 hours, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday.

Remote operations will continue on the sea floor for an undetermined amount of time, he added.

Mauger said it is “too early” to discuss whether there will be an investigation, which he said would be a decision made outside of the search efforts he was in charge of.

Coast Guard: No apparent connection between detected banging noises and debris on sea floor

There doesn’t appear to be a connection between the banging noises picked up by sonar earlier this week and where the debris from the Titan vessel was found on the sea floor, a US Coast Guard official said.

The official said that throughout the search effort his team “reacted to the information that we had available to us.” He reiterated that it was a “really complex environment” and that experts are continuously analyzing all aspects of the search.

The wreckage of the Titanic is located about 900 miles off Cape Cod.

Listening devices did not record any sign of a catastrophic failure during the search, Coast Guard says

Listening devices set up during the search for the Titan submersible did not record any sign of a catastrophic failure, which is believed to have killed the sub’s passengers, Rear Adm. John Mauger said at a news conference Thursday.

A reporter had asked Mauger whether there was any suggestion that a difference in the timing or speed of the rescue effort could have resulted in the occupants being saved.

“The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Mauger said.

“We’re going to continue to document the information there, and understand based on all the information we have, the timeline,” Mauger added.

The size of the debris field is consistent with an "implosion in the water column," expert says

The size of the debris field discovered in the search efforts “is consistent with that implosion in the water column,” according to an expert speaking at the news briefing on the Titan sub.

The location of the submersible was in an area that was approximately 1,600 feet from the wreck of the Titanic, which is an area that does not have any Titanic debris, the expert said, noting that it is a smooth bottom per his knowledge.

US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger also noted that it’s too early to tell the timing of the catastrophic implosion.

“We know that as we’ve been prosecuting this search over the course of the last 72 hours and beyond, that we’ve had sonar buoys in the water nearly continuously and have not detected any catastrophic events when those sonar buoys have been in the water,” he said.

Debris field consistent with "catastrophic implosion," US Coast Guard says

The debris is consistent with a “catastrophic implosion” of the vessel, Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander announced.

Mauger made the remarks after he was asked about the prospects of recovering crew members of the Titan.

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Mauger said.

“We’ll continue to work and search the area down there but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time,” he added.

Coast Guard: Search of area will continue but prospects of recovering deceased passengers unclear

US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said officials will continue to search the area to recover the deceased passengers of the Titanic-bound submersible but doesn’t “have an answer for prospects at this time.”

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor,” the official told reporters Thursday when asked during a news briefing about recovering the victims.

“And the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel, and so we’ll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time,” he added.

Crews located 5 major pieces of debris that helped identify remains of Titan

Search crews discovered “five different major pieces of debris” identified from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy’s director of salvage operations and ocean engineering.

The nose cone, located outside the pressure hull, was the first piece found, Hankins said at the US Coast Guard news conference Thursday. Then, they found “a large debris field,” which had an end bell of the pressure hull.

Crews found a second, smaller debris field within the first, where the other end of the pressure hull was located.

“We continue to map the debris field and, as the admiral said, we will do the best we can to fully map out what’s down there,” Hankins said.

Coast Guard says officials are still working through timeline of sub's failure

It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the “incredibly complex” case of the Titan sub’s catastrophic failure, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters.

Officials are sorting through an “incredibly complex operating environment on the sea floor, over 2 miles beneath the surface,” Mauger said at a news conference in Boston.

He said the remotely operating vehicles searching the floor are “highly capable” and will reveal more information.

Mauger said the Coast Guard will eventually have more information about what went wrong with the sub, and their assessment of the emergency response.

US Coast Guard grateful for "rapid mobilization" of agencies in search for sub

US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger thanked experts and agencies for assisting with the search for the Titan submersible.

Information gathering will continue, US Coast Guard official says

The remotely operated vehicles will remain on scene and continue to gather information following the discovery of debris from the missing Titanic bound submersible, US Coast Guard’s Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday.

One of the ROVs found the debris, as CNN reported earlier .

Debris was "consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," Coast Guard says

The debris found on the sea floor was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” the Coast Guard said.

The remotely operated vehicle (ROV) found the tail cone of the Titan on the sea floor about 1,600 feet away from the bow of the Titanic and other debris nearby, according to Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander.

The debris was analyzed by experts, he said, and the families of the passengers were notified.

OceanGate says it believes passengers on missing sub "have sadly been lost"

OceanGate said Thursday that it believes the passengers of the Titanic-bound submersible have “sadly been lost,” according to a statement from the company.

“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” the company said in a statement.

The company added:

“This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission. We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families.

This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea. We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time.”

Debris found on ocean floor has been assessed to be from the external body of the Titan sub

The debris discovered within the search area of the missing Titanic submersible has been assessed to be from the external body of the sub, according to a memo reviewed by CNN.

The search for the crew capsule of the Titan vessel continues, the memo says.

The debris was located on the ocean floor, roughly 500 meters (about a third of a mile) off of the bow of the Titanic, and it was found around 8:55 a.m. ET.

It was discovered by a remotely operated vehicle that was searching the seafloor, according to the US Coast Guard.

The discovery came at an urgent time for the search and rescue effort. Experts say the sub and its five passengers would be reaching the limit of the sub’s roughly 96 hours of life support, having gone missing Sunday morning.

Expert describes how a search vehicle could find debris on the pitch-black sea floor

The vehicles used to search the sea floor for the missing Titan submersible are powerful machines that can be piloted through pitch-black darkness by an operator on the surface, Mike Welham, a marine operations specialist and author, told CNN.

One of the remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, involved in the search discovered a debris field, according to the US Coast Guard and the vehicle’s creator, Pelagic Research Services. It is not yet clear if the debris field is related to the missing submersible.

ROVs are very large and powerful, equipped with lights, cameras and technology that make them “purpose built to go to those depths,” Welham told CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday.

The search vehicle is connected to a vessel that remains on the surface of the water as it drops down to the seabed. Once an ROV reaches deep sea, a pilot on the ship has to get oriented to its precise location.

“They will then begin a search pattern,” Welham explained.

Welham said now that the search team has honed in on a debris field, the ROV will gather more video and try to determine whether the field is new debris related to the sub or part of the Titanic wreck itself.

Company confirms its vehicle found debris field in Titanic submersible search area

A spokesperson for Pelagic Research Services confirmed to CNN that its remotely operated vehicle, which was the first to conduct a search for the missing OceanGate sub on the sea floor, found the debris field.

The US Coast Guard announced earlier today that a debris field had been found in the search area.  

Pelagic Research Services describes itself on its website as “an ocean services company that brings expedition planning, execution and state of the art sub-sea research tools to the ocean community on a global basis.”

Expert says debris fields aren't uncommon near Titanic, but officials may have seen something that stood out

The US Coast Guard will go through a verification process to determine whether a debris field found in the search area for the missing Titanic submersible is related to the sub, Maximilian Cremer, the director of the Ocean Technology Group at the University of Hawaii Marine Center, told CNN.

The Coast Guard announced Thursday that a debris field was found using a remotely operated vehicle, but it remains unclear if it is connected in any way to the missing submersible. 

Cremer would “not be surprised to find a debris field near the wreck of the Titanic,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“I would have to see what it actually is,” he continued, adding that he’s unsure if the search vehicle transmits video.

Bash asked Cremer whether he believes it means anything that the US Coast Guard — which is also clearly aware of the debris types typically found on the ocean floor — made a point to share the news about the field.

“I’m sure they’re now going through a verification process to see if it is actually associated with the stricken sub,” he added.

On the sub’s oxygen supply: Bash also asked about the submersible’s oxygen supplies. The sub is now believed to be reaching the limits of its typical 96 hours of life support, having gone missing Sunday morning.

Experts interviewed by CNN have said crew members would realize that remaining calm and conserving energy was critical if they were awaiting rescue.

If there was an issue with the sub, “whatever failure it was,” it’s fair to assume “you would have some excitement and some panic going on for a brief period of time,” Cremer said.

But, he continued, a “strong leader” on board would likely insist that everyone goes into “a sort of hibernation state, and uses as little oxygen as possible.”

US Coast Guard will discuss "findings" on the sea floor near the Titanic later today

A US Coast Guard briefing at 3 p.m. ET will focus on the findings from a remotely operated vehicle “on the sea floor near the Titanic,” according to news release from the Coast Guard.

Moments ago, the Coast Guard announced a debris field was discovered in the Titanic submersible search area, and authorities are “evaluating the information.”

Here’s who will be a part of the briefing later today:

• Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander
• Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator

The briefing will be held at the Coast Guard Base in Boston.

US Coast Guard says debris field has been discovered within the Titanic submersible search area

The US Coast Guard says a debris field was discovered by a remotely operated vehicle near the Titanic submersible search area, and authorities are “evaluating the information,” officials tweeted Thursday.

It is unclear if this debris field is connected to the missing submersible. 

The US Coast Guard also has announced a press briefing at 3 p.m. ET.

OceanGate co-founder says time remaining to rescue passengers is longer than "what most people think"

While life support supplies are now believed to be running low , a co-founder of the company that operates the missing Titanic submersible says he believes the crew’s expertise will extend the “window available” for rescue.

Guillermo Söhnlein made the comments in a statement to CNN. He specified he was speaking on behalf of himself and not the company, OceanGate.

He said OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush — who is aboard the sub — and the rest of the crew would have “realized days ago that the best thing they can do to ensure their rescue is to extend the limits of those supplies by relaxing as much as possible.”

Based on the crew members’ expertise, the “window available” for rescue is longer than “what most people think,” Söhnlein said. 

Thursday will be a “critical day in this search and rescue mission,” he added.

Time is of the essence: The amount of oxygen on the missing submersible, which has five people on board, is becoming a vital issue , experts have told CNN.

The Titan sub, which begins each trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic with an estimated 96 hours of life support, has been missing since Sunday morning, setting up Thursday morning as a key target for finding the vessel and those on board.

The 21-foot submersible, with its rudimentary controls and no room for passengers to stretch out, would also have “limited rations” of food and water, according to officials.

A fellow adventurer and retired Navy captain interviewed by CNN have also said the crew would know to conserve oxygen by resting and remaining as calm as possible.

CNN’s Nouran Salahieh contributed to this report.

Medical team arrives on the scene of the Titanic submersible rescue effort, Canadian official says

A Canadian Navy ship carrying a medical team specializing in dive medicine and a hyperbaric recompression chamber that can hold as many as six people has arrived on scene in the Titanic submersible rescue effort, according to an official from the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The medical team and the hyperbaric chamber traveled on the HMCS Glace Bay, which arrived on scene just after 9 a.m. local time Thursday morning, said Lt. Cmdr. Len Hickey, senior public affairs officer, said in a statement.

“JRCC Halifax continues to assist MRCC (Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre) Boston in support of submarine search efforts,” Hickey said. Additionally, three Canadian Coast Guard Ships — John Cabot, Ann Harvey and Terry Fox — are on scene and can provided equipment and personnel if needed, he added.

CNN’s Laura Ly contributed to this report.

Teenager trapped on missing sub is university student in Glasgow

Pakistani teenager Suleman Dawood who is among five people trapped in the missing Titan submersible is a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

The university confirmed to CNN on Thursday that Suleman is a Strathclyde Business School student and has just completed his first year.

Search teams are racing to find the sub before oxygen runs out. Here's what you need to know

The search for the missing Titan submersible is now in a critical stage, as rescue teams race to locate the vessel before oxygen supplies run out.

The submersible begins each trip with 96 hours of life support and has been missing since Sunday, setting up Thursday morning as a key target for finding the vessel and those on board. Officials fear the craft’s oxygen supply could run out this morning.

Medical personnel and search vessels with extra capabilities headed to the scene on Thursday, with time running out.

If you’re just reading in now, here’s the latest news this morning:

• “New capabilities” in search: New, high-tech vessels and medical personnel are moving to the search site as rescue efforts reach a pivotal moment, a Coast Guard official has said. That includes a Magellan ROV, a uniquely equipped vessel whose use was pushed for by the Explorers Club group early on in the search.
• Search vehicle reaches sea floor: A remotely operated vehicle “has reached the sea floor” and has begun searching for the missing Titanic submersible early Thursday morning, according to the US Coast Guard. It added that “The French vessel L’Atalante is preparing their ROV to enter the water.”
• Concern over low-tech features: A former OceanGate subcontractor who worked on the development of the Titan submersible said while  the game controller to operate the vessel may seem low-tech, it was actually by design. OceanGate tried to use as many “off-the-shelf” items as possible to cut down on research and development as well as costs, Doug Virnig told CNN Wednesday.
• How the sub went missing:  The vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, began its two-hour descent to the wreck of the Titanic on Sunday morning. (See how deep the wreckage is here. ) It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the craft to the location in the North Atlantic, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said. Search operations began later that day. It’s still not clear what happened to the submersible, why it lost contact, and how close it was to the Titanic when it went missing.
• What we know about the noises : Banging noises were identified by Canadian aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipment was relocated to where the noises were detected, according to Capt. Jamie Frederick, the response coordinator for the First Coast Guard District. But searches in the area “yielded negative results,” he said. Data from the plane that identified the noises was sent to the US Navy, but has so far been inconclusive, Frederick said, adding that the Coast Guard does not know what the sounds were.
• What it could be like onboard: Officials believe the five people on board have “limited rations” of food and water. Ret. Navy Capt. David Marquet, a former submarine captain, told CNN the near-freezing water at that depth is probably making the situation very uncomfortable. “There’s frost on the inside of the parts of the submarine. They’re all huddled together trying to conserve their body heat. They’re running low on oxygen and they’re exhaling carbon dioxide,” he said.

British submariner and equipment are assisting search efforts for missing sub

A British navy submariner and equipment from a UK firm will help the search for the missing Titan submersible , a Downing Street spokesperson said Thursday.

“At the request of US Coastguard, the UK has embedded a Royal Navy submariner to assist the search and rescue effort for the missing submarine,” the spokesperson said, according to UK’s PA Media on Thursday.

Lt. Commander Richard Kantharia “has significant knowledge of submarine warfare and dived operations and so he will obviously be bringing that experience to the search and rescue team,” the spokesperson added. The officer was on exchange with the US Navy and has been seconded to the search and rescue team, according to PA.

A British C-17 aircraft will transport “specialist commercial equipment” provided by deep sea-mapping company Magellan to St. John’s to assist with the search-and-rescue effort, PA also reported.

A spokesperson for Britain’s Royal Air Force told CNN on Thursday: “Following a request overnight from the lead organisation, RAF air transport assets are assisting with the movement of additional commercial equipment. ”

Along with the C-17, an A400 aircraft is transporting specialist loaders and crew, the air force said. Both aircraft departed RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland for Canada earlier on Thursday. 

The missing submarine is carrying five people — a British adventurer, a French diver, a Pakistani father and son and the founder of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operated the tour to the Titanic wreckage.

A massive search operation is underway in an area twice the size of Connecticut for the submersible that went missing Sunday —as officials fear the craft’s oxygen supply could run out this morning.

From Catherine Nicholls in London

Passengers on the missing sub would know to "take it easy" to save oxygen, friend of two onboard says

A friend of two passengers on board the missing submersible has said he still has hope the vessel will be found.

“I know that the adventurers on board are experienced, very experienced,” said Per Wimmer, an adventurer who was previously signed up for two canceled trips on the Titan.

Wimmer is an acquaintance of Hamish Harding and Stockton Rush, two of the five people on the missing vessel. He said Harding, a British businessman and trained jet pilot, and Rush, the CEO and founder of the company leading the voyage, are both very experienced adventurers who would know to conserve oxygen.

Wimmer said that the presence of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush on board the vessel is helpful, as he knows “the ins and outs of how this submersible works.”

Officials fear the sub’s oxygen supply would run out on Thursday, meaning the search is in a critical phase.

Medical personnel to join Titan search on Thursday, official says

New, high-tech vessels and medical personnel are moving to the search site as rescue efforts reach a pivotal moment, a Coast Guard official has said.

Rear Adm. John Mauger told NBC on Thursday that the search and rescue mission will continue with “new capability” arriving.

That includes a Magellan ROV, a uniquely equipped vessel whose use was pushed for by the Explorers Club group early on in the search. It has been questioned whether the Magellan should have been sent to the site much earlier in the search operation.

Mauger said they have been “overwhelmed by all the support that’s been provided by the international community” adding “we made some decisions to prioritize based on gear that was closest to the site and could get there.”

Mauger also said that medical personnel who have “deep sea medical expertise” are moving to the site, and a hyperbaric chamber is also en route.

Search vehicle reaches sea floor as teams race to find sub

A remote operated vehicle “has reached the sea floor” and has begun searching for the missing Titanic submersible early Thursday morning, according to the US Coast Guard.

“The Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic has deployed an ROV that has reached the sea floor and began its search for the missing sub,” the US Coast Guard tweeted .

It added that “The French vessel L’Atalante is preparing their ROV to enter the water.”

Titan submersible "is designed to come back up" after 24 hours, investor says

The Titan submersible that went missing en route to the Titanic wreck was designed to return to the surface after 24 hours, according to Aaron Newman, an investor in OceanGate who visited the site on the vessel in 2021.

Titan is held underwater by ballast — heavy weights that helps with a vessel’s stability — built to be automatically released after 24 hours to send the sub to the surface, Newman said. 

Crew members are told they can release the ballast by rocking the ship or use a pneumatic pump to knock the weights free, Newman said. If all else fails, he said, the lines securing the ballast are designed to fall apart after 24 hours to automatically send it back to the ocean’s surface. 

Titan’s thrusters are powered by an external electrical system, while an internal system powers communications and a heater, Newman said.

Separately, Discovery Channel host Josh Gates , who went on a test dive on the Titan in 2021, said he learned that year that there were four ways for the vessel to shed weight and bring it back up to the surface in the case of an emergency.

There is a computer-controlled weight release, a manual-valve system that injects air into exterior ballast containers, a hydraulic system to drop weights and an ability to detach from the sled attached to the submersible and help move the vessel back to the surface.

Read more here .

"We need a miracle," Titanic exploration expert says

Teams searching for the missing submersible “need a miracle” to find it before oxygen supplies run out, a leading deep-sea explorer told CNN.

“The good news there is that miracles can happen,” added David Gallo, the senior adviser for Strategic Initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc.

Gallo is a colleague of French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the passengers on the sub. He said that Nargeolet, an experienced explorer, would ensure that the banging noises picked up by search teams “cannot be interpreted as anything but human,” if indeed the noises did come from inside the vessel.

Thursday morning was identified as a critical period for the search operation, with oxygen supplies on board the sub understood to be rapidly dwindling.

Future research at the Titanic wreck is unlikely after the Titan went missing, expert says

The chances of future research being carried out at the Titanic wreck have diminished after the Titan sub went missing on its journey to the site, an expert has said.

David Scott-Beddard, the CEO of Titanic exhibition company White Star Memories Ltd, told CNN that the tragedy has “without a doubt” impacted opportunities to visit and study the wreckage.

“The chances of any future research being carried out on the wreck of Titanic is extremely slim. Probably not in my lifetime,” Scott-Beddard told CNN’s “Early Start.” 

Concerns have been raised about the low-tech and controversial features of the OceanGate vessel . A former OceanGate subcontractor who worked on the development of the submersible Titan has said some of the construction materials and design choices were considered “controversial” at the time it was being made in 2018.

Enduring appeal: Several research trips were made to the Titanic site after it was discovered in 1985, and many of its artifacts have been controversially recovered and displayed around the world since. But commercial trips like those offered by OceanGate are a far more recent phenomenon. 

“Titanic is one of those unreachable, unattainable things for most of us, unless you’ve been working in research and have been lucky enough to dive to the wreck in the past,” Scott-Beddard said, explaining the enduring appeal of the ship. “She sits majestically on the sea bed; (it’s) incredibly rare for a ship that sunk to be sitting upright.”

The ocean's depths are so elusive that only 20% of the seafloor has been mapped

The submersible vehicle currently  lost at sea  is part of a relatively new effort enabling tourists and other paying customers to explore the depths of the ocean, the vast majority of which has never been seen by human eyes.

Though people have been exploring the ocean’s surface for tens of thousands of years, only about 20% of the seafloor has been mapped, according to 2022 figures from  the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Researchers often say that traveling to space is easier than plunging to the bottom of the ocean. While 12 astronauts have spent a collective total of 300 hours on the lunar surface, only three people have spent around three hours exploring Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of Earth’s seabed, according to the  Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution .

There’s a reason deep-sea exploration by humans has been so limited:  Traveling to the ocean’s depths means entering a realm with enormous levels of pressure the farther you descend — a high-risk endeavor. The environment is dark with almost no visibility. The cold temperatures are extreme.

Many of the factors that could make the vessel so difficult to locate and recover are also the reasons a comprehensive exploration of the ocean floor remains elusive.

“Aquatic search is pretty tricky, as the ocean floor is a lot more rugged than on land,” said Dr. Jamie Pringle, a reader in forensic geoscience at England’s Keele University, in a statement.

Read the full story here .

Titan's low-tech features were by design, former subcontractor says

A former OceanGate subcontractor who worked on the development of the Titan submersible said while  the game controller  to operate the vessel may seem low-tech, it was actually by design. 

OceanGate tried to use as many “off-the-shelf” items as possible to cut down on research and development as well as costs, Doug Virnig told CNN Wednesday.

“So if you can take these components off the shelf and incorporate them into a project like this, where you don’t have the research and development timelines and expense, that I believe is a wise choice.” 

OceanGate’s goal was to research the ocean and not adventure tourism — which was simply a way to fund the research, Virnig said. 

He added that OceanGate had “gone cutting edge where they needed to,” but they “also incorporated a good bit of conventional wisdom.”  

When asked if he thinks if there is a possibility Titan is never found, Virnig said it will eventually be found.   

Oxygen is running out as the search for the Titanic submersible approaches a critical stage

The amount of oxygen on the  missing submersible with five people on board  is becoming a vital issue, some experts say, as more advanced equipment is rushed to the North Atlantic Ocean in a complex international search operation now at its most critical juncture.

The Titan submersible begins each trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic with an estimated 96 hours of life support and has been missing since Sunday morning, setting up Thursday morning as a key target for finding the vessel and those on board.

Banging noises  detected on Tuesday and Wednesday from underneath the water in the  massive search area  have provided hope for survivors — but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack and time is of the essence, experts say.

Inside the 21-foot submersible, with rudimentary controls and no room for its passengers to stretch out, the crew would have had “limited rations” of food and water, officials have said.

As aircraft perform searches from above and remotely operated vehicles probe underwater, the number of assets in the search operation is expected to double in the next day or two, Frederick said Wednesday.

The search area for the missing submersible stretches about two times the size of Connecticut on the surface and goes down as deep as 2-and-a-half miles, according to Frederick.

Former OceanGate subcontractor says cutting edge technology was considered controversial  

A former OceanGate subcontractor who worked on the development of the submersible Titan says some of the construction materials and design choices were considered “controversial” at the time it was being made in 2018.

Doug Virnig, who has a background in engineering and operations, worked on the project for about a year in an operations role, he told CNN in an interview Wednesday. 

He expressed admiration for OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who he interacted with at work while fabricating parts for the vessel together.

Pressure tests: The company was working on making a submersible that could fit five people but still be lightweight, and used experimental methods with certain technology, Virnig said. 

One example he cited was the pressure hull on the Titan, which was made primarily out of carbon fiber, which contains light, high tensile material, he said.  

“If you have them in a conventional application like an airplane fuselage where they’re under tension, that is a conventional and known application for that material, but under compression, the forces are exactly opposite,” Virnig said.

“So that’s a fairly experimental or unconventional application for that material.”  

Virnig said Titan’s pressure hull had passed tests at the non-profit Woods Hole Institute, which subjected it to the pressure found at the depth of the Titanic wreck — but the question was how it would perform over time. 

CNN has reached out to the Woods Hole Institute and OceanGate for comment.   

No conning tower: Another controversial choice was not using a conning tower, which is used to get in and out of the pressure hull from the top of the vessel and is frequently used on submarines, Virnig said. But due to the decision to utilize the carbon fiber pressure hull it prevented OceanGate from including the tower, he said. 

These 5 key vessels are playing a big role in the search efforts

Marine authorities are racing against the clock to get resources in place to find and retrieve the Titan submersible, which lost contact with its mother ship during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic deep below the North Atlantic on Sunday.

Life support on the missing sub is expected to dwindle soon for the five people onboard, about 96 hours after its deployment.

Here are five key vessels involved in the search effort, either on the scene or on the way, according to the US and Canadian coast guards:

• CCGS John Cabot: The 207-foot Canadian Coast Guard offshore fishery science vessel carries “advanced deep sonar,” according to the Canadian Coast Guard. Sonar uses sound wave echoes to find objects or to map features in the ocean.
• Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic: The Canadian 307-foot anchor handling vessel has a hangar for remotely operated vehicles (ROV) with a launch and recovery system. Sean Leet, co-founder and chairman of its owner, Horizon Maritime Services, said it has been loaded with an ROV supplied by the US military and is expected at the Titanic wreck site on Thursday.
• Research Vessel L’Atalante: This French, 279-foot multipurpose research vessel carries the Victor 6000, an ROV that can dive to almost 20,000 feet. (The Titanic wreck is at almost 13,000 feet.) Victor 6000 can perform tasks including video and acoustic search and inspection and has robotic arms that can manipulate objects, according to the ship’s operator, French Oceanographic Fleet.
• HMCS Glace Bay: A Canadian Navy 181-foot coastal defense vessel, it carries medical personnel and a mobile decompression chamber, which could be needed for any survivors brought up from the depth of the Titanic.
• Magellan ROV: A remotely operated vehicle from deep-sea mapping company Magellan, which operates submersibles that can reach more than 19,000 feet. Magellan, based in Guernsey in the British Isles, is best known for its  imagery of the Titanic .

Search operation is going "as fast as it could be," expert says

A massive operation is underway to search for the missing submersible, including an international fleet of ships with highly specialized equipment and technical experts.

Some of those assets have not yet reached the search site, and with time almost running out for oxygen levels onboard the vessel, there are some concerns over how long it is taking to get the equipment in place.

Ocean explorer Tom Dettweiler told CNN it is a “tremendous effort” to move all the heavy equipment needed and “it has been done as fast as it could be.”

Dettweiler said lifting the vessel would be “a massive effort,” which would have to be “done quite quickly.”

“It’s just we are dealing with a long distance and difficult conditions. If you think about it, it is very much like the original sinking of the Titanic where the rescuers just couldn’t get to it in time,” he said.

According to tour operator OceanGate’s website, it takes the Titan about two hours to come back to the surface from the wreck of the Titanic.

Dettweiler said if the submersible is found at depth, it would take some time to bring it to the surface.

Here's what we know about safety concerns surrounding the Titan submersible

Industry leaders had raised a number of safety concerns about the Titan submersible before its disappearance.

Titan’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions, has also faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years, according to court records.

Here’s what we know about those safety fears:

• Workers’ unease: Court filings reveal two former OceanGate employees separately raised similar safety concerns about the thickness of the submersible’s hull. One former OceanGate worker told CNN the hull had only been built to 5 inches thick, when company engineers told him they had expected it to be 2 inches thicker.
• Experts’ doubts: Industry leaders expressed unease five years ago about OceanGate’s “experimental approach” to the Titan and its planned Titanic trip. The Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of  the Marine Technology Society  wrote to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in 2018 and specifically expressed concern over the company’s compliance with a maritime risk assessment certification known as DNV-GL. “There are 10 submarines in the world that can go 12,000 ft and deeper,” said Will Kohnen of the Marine Technology Society. “All of them are certified except the OceanGate submersible.”   OceanGate did not respond to a request from CNN to comment on the letter, which was  obtained by CNN  and first reported by the New York Times.  
• Vessel not classed: The Titan is  not subject to government regulations  from independent groups that set safety standards because the  technology is so new  and hasn’t yet been reviewed, the tour operator has claimed. Most chartered vessels, whether oil tankers or commercial ships, are “classed” by independent groups that set safety standards. But the Titan is not classed, a 2019 blog post from the company said, adding that classing innovative designs often requires a multiyear approval process, which gets in the way of rapid innovation.
• Delays and mechanical problems: London-based travel firm Henry Cookson Adventures accused OceanGate of not having a “seaworthy vessel” when it entered an agreement in 2016 to take up to nine passengers to the Titanic in 2018. A civil suit filed in 2021, which was later dismissed, questioned whether delays to the trip were perhaps “because the submersible vessel was unable to be certified at the time for safe operations.” A 2018 post on OceanGate’s website said  “delays caused by weather and lightning” prevented it from completing a series of test dives.
• Multiple delays: A Florida couple alleged in a lawsuit earlier this year that they were unable to get a refund after their planned Titanic expedition in 2018 with OceanGate was repeatedly postponed, CNN previously reported . 
• Hull rebuilt: Some expeditions were delayed after OceanGate was forced to rebuild the Titan’s hull because it showed “cyclic fatigue” and wouldn’t be able to travel deep enough to reach the Titanic’s wreckage,  according to a 2020 article  by GeekWire, which interviewed CEO Rush.
• Vessel lost: In another high-profile cancellation, OceanGate took CBS News’ David Pogue for a dive on its submersible last year, but called off the trip due to an equipment malfunction after descending just 37 feet, Pogue  said in the broadcast . In a later dive, the vessel lost contact with its ship and was unable to find the wreckage. “We were lost for 2-and-a-half-hours,” a passenger told CBS.
• Battery issue: A November court filing from an adviser to the company said in one dive, the sub encountered a battery issue and had to be “manually attached to its lifting platform,” which led to “sustained modest damage to its external components.”
• OceanGate on safety: In a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specs and a hull monitoring system that he called “an unparalleled safety feature.” The filing lays out the Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailed its 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull. The filing says OceanGate’s vessel was the result of more than eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”
• But those claims are disputed: The University of Washington said the laboratory never dealt with design, engineering or testing for Titan. The university said its collaboration with OceanGate “resulted in a steel-hulled vessel, named the Cyclops 1, that can travel to 500 meters depth, which is far shallower than the depths that OceanGate’s TITAN submersible traveled to.” Separately, Boeing said they were not a partner on the Titan and they did not design or build the submersible, despite a  2021 press release  from OceanGate listing the company as a “partner.” OceanGate told CNN it was unable to provide additional information about its relationship with Boeing.

Titan pilot Stockton Rush said in 2021 he's "broken some rules" to build the now-missing submersible

Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and  one of five people on the submersible missing  in the North Atlantic, has cultivated a reputation as a kind of modern-day Jacques Cousteau — a nature lover, adventurer and visionary.

Rush, 61, has approached his dream of deep-sea exploration with child-like verve and an antipathy toward regulations — a pattern that has come into sharp relief since Sunday night, when his vessel, the Titan, went missing.

In another interview, Stockton boasted that he’d “broken some rules” in his career.

“I think it was General MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules you break,” Rush said in a video interview  with YouTuber Alan Estrada last year. “And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”

Ocean exploration: Rush said he believes deeply that the sea, rather than the sky, offers humanity the best shot at survival when the Earth’s surface becomes uninhabitable.

In his eagerness to explore, Rush has often appeared skeptical, if not dismissive, of regulations that might slow innovation.

The commercial sub industry is “obscenely safe” he told Smithsonian Magazine  in 2019, “because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”

Read more about Stockton Rush here.

Search for the missing submersible is entering a critical fifth day. Here's what you need to know

The search for the missing Titan submersible is now in a critical stage, as rescue teams race overnight to locate the vessel before oxygen supplies run out.

The submersible begins each trip with 96 hours of life support and has been missing since Sunday, setting up Thursday morning as a key target for finding the vessel and those on board.

On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard widened the search area and rerouted some of its equipment to try to pinpoint banging sounds heard during the aerial search in the remote North Atlantic area. Though it didn’t yield any results, the sonar devices from the Canadian P-3 aircraft are being analyzed by the US Navy, officials said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a fleet of ships and specialized equipment has been deployed, including a US Navy deep ocean salvage system and Canadian Coast Guard ship John Cabot , which has “side scanning sonar capabilities.”

Here’s the latest:

• What we know about the noises : Banging noises were identified by Canadian aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipment was relocated to where the noises were detected, according to Capt. Jamie Frederick, the response coordinator for the First Coast Guard District. But searches in the area “yielded negative results,” he said. Data from the plane that identified the noises was sent to the US Navy, but has so far been inconclusive,” Frederick said, adding that the Coast Guard does not know what the sounds were.
• The Polar Prince: The support vessel that brought the submersible to the dive site will remain in the ocean until the search is complete , the operator said Wednesday. Horizon Maritime Services said the Polar Prince’s role is to support the Coast Guard and that searchers are “very aware of the time sensitivity around this mission.” There is a crew of 17 people on the vessel, said Sean Leet, the company’s co-founder and chairman.
• Specialized equipment: If search crews locate the missing submersible deep in the ocean, authorities will then face a highly complex recovery mission. A US Navy salvage system arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Wednesday, a Navy official said. The Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS) is capable of retrieving objects or vessels off the bottom of the ocean floor up to a depth of 20,000 feet, but needs first to be welded to a ship which could take a full day, the official said.
• More safety concerns: An industry leader said OceanGate Expeditions strayed from industry norms by declining a voluntary, rigorous safety review of Titan. “There are 10 submarines in the world that can go 12,000 feet and deeper,” said Will Kohnen of the Marine Technology Society. “All of them are certified except the Oceangate submersible.”   Court filings also reveal OceanGate years ago was confronted with  safety concerns about the vessel.  Records also show the company faced a series of mechanical problems and inclement weather conditions that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years.
• 2021 claims disputed: The University of Washington reiterated Wednesday that they were not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the Titan submersible, despite assertions that they were, according to a 2021 court filing by OceanGate. CNN reached out to OceanGate for comment. Separately, Boeing also released a statement saying they were not a partner on the Titan and they did not design or build the submersible, despite a  2021 press release  from OceanGate listing the company as a “partner.” OceanGate told CNN it was unable to provide additional information about its relationship with Boeing.

US Coast Guard provides new search pattern graphic

The United States Coast Guard provided  a new graphic  Wednesday night showing the updated search pattern for the Titan submersible.

The USCG also said the following assets are on their way to the site to assist in the search:

• Canadian CGS Ann Harvey 
• Canadian CGS Terry Fox 
• Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic (ROV) 
• French Research Vessel L’Atalante (ROV) 
• His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Glace Bay (mobile decompression chamber and medical personnel) 
• Air National Guard C-130  
• ROV from Magellan

This is who's on board the missing submersible

Authorities said the Titan submersible was carrying five people when its mothership lost contact with it on Sunday, about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent to explore the Titanic wreckage. 

Here’s what we know about the people on board:

Paul-Henri Nargeolet , a French diver with decades of experience exploring the Titanic, is on the vessel, according to his family.

Nargeolet serves as the director of underwater research at RMS Titanic Inc., the company that has exclusive rights to salvage artifacts from the ship. According to his biography on the company’s website, Nargeolet completed 35 dives to the wreck and supervised the recovery of 5,000 artifacts. He spent 22 years in the French Navy, where he rose to the rank of commander, the website says. 

British billionaire explorer  Hamish Harding  is on the submersible, his company Action Aviation said in a social media statement.

Harding made headlines in 2019 for being part of a flight crew that broke the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe via both poles. In 2020, he became one of the first people to dive to Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, widely believed to be the deepest point in the world’s oceans. Last year, he paid an undisclosed sum of money for one of the seats on Blue Origin’s space flight. 

The family of  Shahzada Dawood  and his son,  Suleman Dawood , said the two are on board. A family statement said the duo had taken the “journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.”

The Dawoods are a prominent Pakistani business family. Dawood Hercules Corporation, their business, is among the largest corporations in the country, with a portfolio spanning energy, petrochemicals, fertilizers, IT, food and agriculture.

OceanGate CEO and founder  Stockton Rush  is among the five onboard, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan.

The company did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment about Rush being aboard. According to the company’s social media posts, he has previously piloted “Titan,” the missing vessel.

What the explorers aboard the missing submersible would expect on their trip

The missing submersible’s trip to the wreckage of the Titanic was the final expedition of five such tours scheduled for this year, an archived version of the operator’s website said.

OceanGate Expeditions said each eight-day trip is a “unique travel experience” that also helps the scientific community as “every dive also has a scientific objective,” according to an archived version of the itinerary seen by CNN, which is no longer accessible on their website.

Here’s an overview of the itinerary:

• Day 1:  Divers arrive at St. John’s, Newfoundland, meet the expedition crew and board the ship that will take them to the Titanic wreck site. The  Polar Prince  was the support ship that transported the crew for this current mission.
• Day 2:  The ship continues out to the dive site in the North Atlantic Ocean. The expedition leader will go over safety information and dive logistics. The science team and content experts will also help divers prepare what they may discover on the dive.
• Day 3-7:  Diving begins depending on the sea conditions. Final dive checks take place before crew members board the five-person Titan submersible. Those not diving the first day “will be incorporated into other areas of dive ops — like driving the dingy, assisting the Expedition Manager, collecting media,” the website said. For those onboard the Titan, the descent takes about two hours and crew members will assist the pilot “with coms and tracking, take notes for the science team about what you see outside of the viewport, watch a movie or eat lunch,” it said. “Soon you will arrive at depth, and after some navigating across the seafloor and debris field, finally see what you’ve been waiting for: the RMS Titanic.” An onboard content expert will point out key features of the wreck and animal life while exploring the wreck, it said. “Enjoy hours of exploring the wreck and debris field before making the two-hour ascent to the surface,” the website said.
• Day 8:  The ship makes the 380-mile journey back to St. Johns.

Five more expeditions were planned for 2024, according to the archived version of the itinerary.

What's the difference between a submersible and a submarine?

A submersible, such as the missing Titan vessel, is a type of watercraft — but it has some key differences from the better-known submarine.

Unlike submarines, a submersible needs a mother ship to launch it. The Titan’s support ship was the Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaking ship, according to the ship’s co-owner Horizon Maritime.

A submarine can also stay underwater much longer, while submersibles have much fewer power reserves, according to OceanGate, the company operating the Titan expedition, in a webpage seen by CNN that is no longer available.

The Titan has 96 hours of life support capacity, and its dives down to the Titanic wreckage usually last 10 to 11 hours, according to the site — compared to submarines that can stay underwater for months.

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Orlando Cepeda dies

The Titan submersible imploded, killing all 5 on board, the US Coast Guard says

The race against time to find a submersible that disappeared on its way to the Titanic wreckage site entered a new phase of desperation as the final hours of oxygen left on board the tiny vessel ticked off the clock. (June 22)

A renowned Titanic expert, a world-record holding adventurer, two members of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families and the CEO of the company leading an expedition to the world’s most famous shipwreck are facing critical danger aboard a small submersible that went missing in the Atlantic Ocean. (June 21)

A surveillance vessel has detected underwater noises in the area where rescuers are searching for a submersible that went missing in the North Atlantic while bringing five people down to the wreck of the Titanic, authorities said Wednesday. (June 21)

FILE - This undated image provided by OceanGate Expeditions in June 2021 shows the company’s Titan submersible. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File)

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In this satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies, from top to bottom, the vessels Horizon Arctic, Deep Energy and Skandi Vinland search for the missing submersible Titan, Thursday, June 22, 2023 in the Atlantic Ocean. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP)

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, center at microphone, talks to the media Thursday, June 22, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. The U.S. Coast Guard says the missing submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board. Coast Guard officials said during a news conference that they’ve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which has been missing for several days. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, talks to the media, Thursday, June 22, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. The missing submersible Titan imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

This photo provided by OceanGate Expeditions shows a submersible vessel named Titan used to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic. In a race against the clock on the high seas, an expanding international armada of ships and airplanes searched Tuesday, June 20, 2023, for the submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP)

FILE - OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush emerges from the hatch atop the OceanGate submarine Cyclops 1 in the San Juan Islands, Wash., on Sept. 12, 2018. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night, June 18, 2023. (Alan Berner/The Seattle Times via AP, File)

FILE - Submersible pilot Randy Holt, right, communicates with the support boat as he and Stockton Rush, left, CEO and Co-Founder of OceanGate, dive in the company’s submersible, “Antipodes,” about three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 28, 2013. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night, June 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

FILE - In this image released by Action Aviation, the submersible Titan is prepared for a dive into a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean on an expedition to the Titanic on Sunday, June 18, 2023. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night. (Action Aviation via AP, File)

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, right, listens as Paul Hankins, U.S. Navy civilian contractor, supervisor of salvage, left, talks to the media, Thursday, June 22, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. The U.S. Coast Guard says the missing submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board. Coast Guard officials said during the news conference that they’ve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which has been missing for several days. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

FILE - The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Warren Deyampert is docked as a member of the Coast Guard walks past, Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night, June 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

FILE - The logo for an OceanGate Expeditions 2019 Titanic expedition is seen on a marine industrial warehouse office door in Everett, Wash., Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night. (AP Photo/Ed Komenda, File)

CORRECTS SPELLING OF THE NAME TO HENRI, INSTEAD OF HENRY This photo combo shows from left, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Stockton Rush, and Hamish Harding are facing critical danger aboard a small submersible that went missing in the Atlantic Ocean. The missing submersible Titan imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday, June 22, 2023. (AP Photo/File)

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick, right, faces reporters as Royal Navy Lt Cdr Rich Kantharia, left, looks on during a news conference, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. The U.S. Coast Guard says sounds and banging noises have been heard from the search area for Titanic submersible. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick, left, faces reporters as Carl Hartsfield, director and senior program manager Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, center, and Paul Hankins, U.S. Navy civilian contractor, supervisor of salvage, right, look on during a news conference, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. The U.S. Coast Guard says sounds and banging noises have been heard from the search area for Titanic submersible. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

In this satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies, from top to bottom, the vessels L’Atalante, Horizon Arctic, Deep Energy, and Skandi Vinland search for the missing submersible Titan, Thursday June 22, 2023 in the Atlantic Ocean. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP)

U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick, center at microphone, faces reporters during a news conference, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston. The U.S. Coast Guard says sounds and banging noises have been heard from the search area for Titanic submersible. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

FILE - This 2004 photo provided by the Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, shows the remains of a coat and boots in the mud on the sea bed near the Titanic’s stern. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night, June 18, 2023. (Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, File)

A submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.

The sliver of hope that remained for finding the five men alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of oxygen was expected to run out following its Sunday launch and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters.

“This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.

After the craft was reported missing, the U.S. Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior Navy official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.

The Navy passed on that information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all five people in the vessel, including CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, “have sadly been lost.”

The others on board were two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021. The company has not responded to additional questions about the Titan’s voyage this week.

The company’s office was “closed indefinitely while the staff copes with the tragic loss of their team member,” according to a statement Thursday by the Port of Everett, which is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of downtown Seattle and is home to OceanGate.

The Coast Guard will continue searching for more signs about what happened to the Titan.

While the Navy likely detected the implosion Sunday through its acoustics system, underwater sounds heard Tuesday and Wednesday — which initially gave hope for a possible rescue — were probably unrelated to the submersible. The Navy’s possible clue was not known publicly until Thursday, when The Wall Street Journal first reported it.

With a search area covering thousands of miles — twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) deep — rescuers all week rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance.

Broadcasters around the world started newscasts at the critical hour Thursday with news of the submersible. The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya showed a clock on air counting down to their estimate of when the air could potentially run out.

The White House thanked the U.S. Coast Guard, along with Canadian, British and French partners who helped in the search and rescue efforts.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan. They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers,” it said in a statement.

The Titan launched at 6 a.m. Sunday and was reported overdue that afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. By Thursday, when the oxygen supply was expected to run out, there was little hope of finding the crew alive.

In 2021 and 2022, at least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic site, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the shipwreck. But questions about the submersible’s safety were raised by former passengers .

One of the company’s first customers likened a dive he made to the site two years ago to a suicide mission.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2 1/2-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10 1/2 hours.

Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth, England, said the disappearance of the Titan highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.

“Even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen,” Roterman said. “With the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this.”

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Danica Kirka in London; and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

Titanic sub destroyed in 'catastrophic implosion,' all five aboard dead

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Deep in the Atlantic, a ‘Catastrophic Implosion’ and Five Lives Lost

The vast multinational search for the missing submersible ended after pieces of it were found on the ocean floor, 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.

By Jenna Russell

A vast multinational search for five people who had descended to view the wreckage of the sunken R.M.S. Titanic ended on Thursday after pieces of the privately owned submersible vessel that had carried them were found on the ocean floor, evidence of a “catastrophic implosion” with no survivors, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The dramatic search effort, in a remote area of the North Atlantic 900 miles off Cape Cod, Mass., had mesmerized people worldwide for days after the 22-foot watercraft, called Titan, lost contact with its parent ship less than two hours into its voyage on Sunday. The grim discovery, by a remotely operated vehicle scouring the sea bottom, also trained attention on high-risk, high-cost adventure tourism, raising questions about the safety protocols followed by companies that run such expeditions.

“Our thoughts are with the families and making sure they have an understanding, as best as we can provide, of what happened,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the First Coast Guard District, said at a news conference in Boston. “It is a complex case to work through, but I’m confident those questions will begin to get answered.”

Stockton Rush, 61, the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned Titan, was piloting the submersible and among those presumed dead. Others on board were Hamish Harding, 58, a British explorer; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, a French maritime expert who had made more than 35 dives to the Titanic; Shahzada Dawood, 48, a British businessman; and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, a university student.

The quest for the missing vessel was seen at the start as a race against time, as rescuers who hoped the Titan might still be intact hurried to reach the area where it had descended before its supply of oxygen ran out. Hopes surged on Wednesday, after banging noises were detected underwater by maritime surveillance planes; U.S. Navy experts analyzed the sounds for signs that they might be attempts by the Titan’s passengers to signal their location.

But on Thursday afternoon, four days after the vessel went missing, those hopes were extinguished by evidence discovered more than two miles beneath the ocean surface: the tail cone of the Titan adrift on the sea floor, one-third of a mile from the bow of the Titanic, along with the two broken ends of its pressure hull. The debris, Admiral Mauger said, was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of its pressure chamber.”

On Thursday evening, a U.S. Navy official said that underwater sensors had registered readings “consistent with an explosion or implosion” shortly after the loss of contact. That information was sent to the incident commander to help narrow down the search area, the official said.

Without conclusive evidence of a catastrophic failure, it would have been “irresponsible” to assume the five people were dead, the Navy official said, so the mission was treated as an ongoing search and rescue even as the outcome appeared grim.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the Navy’s possible detection of the implosion.

Asked about the prospect of recovering the bodies of the victims, Admiral Mauger said he did not have an answer. “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor,” he said.

The search for the Titan drew an international response, as French, British and Canadian ships struck out for the final resting place of the Titanic, ferrying high-tech search-and-rescue equipment. There was a robot capable of searching 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, and a hyperbaric recompression chamber used to treat diving-related illnesses. But the effort was slowed by the sheer distance they had to travel to reach the site, a journey of several days for some.

Search Vessels Around the Titanic Wreckage

Polar Prince

newfoundland

North Atlantic

the Titanic

Skandi Vinland

Deep Energy

The Canadian vessel

Horizon Arctic deployed

a remote-operated vehicle

that discovered a debris field.

The Titanic wreckage

sits on the ocean

floor, approximately

12,500 feet down.

North Atlantic Ocean

that discovered a debris field

containing remains of the Titan.

There is no indication that the vessel imploded as a result of a collision with the Titanic wreckage; the debris from the Titan was found in a nearby area where the sea bottom is smooth, said Carl Hartsfield, an underwater vehicle designer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who assisted the Coast Guard in the search.

Nine vessels remained in the area as the search for remnants of the Titan, and mapping of the debris field, continued on Thursday afternoon, but Admiral Mauger said they would begin to disperse in the next 24 hours.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.”

With his expedition business, founded in 2009 in Everett, Wash., Mr. Rush had sought to open up wider access to deep-sea exploration. Beginning in 2021, the company offered tourists, travelers and Titanic fanatics who could afford the $250,000 price tag a firsthand look at the remains of the infamous shipwreck that killed more than 1,500 people on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after the luxury liner hit an iceberg.

But Mr. Rush’s venture also drew concern and criticism from industry peers who feared that insufficient safety tests and lax precautions would put its passengers at risk.

James Cameron, the Oscar-winning filmmaker and expert diver whose 1997 blockbuster about the Titanic fueled a new wave of fascination with it, criticized OceanGate in an interview on Thursday for betraying the trust of its paying passengers by forgoing safety certifications.

Along with other experts, Mr. Cameron said the carbon-fiber composites used in Titan’s construction were a risk because the material was not designed to withstand the crushing pressure that bears down on vessels deep beneath the ocean.

Concerns about the company’s practices were not new. In 2018, three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — sent a letter to Mr. Rush, warning that the company’s “experimental” approach could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems.

The Titan’s final dive almost did not happen, as weather conditions failed to cooperate. When a window suddenly opened, Mr. Harding, a veteran explorer, saw it as a lucky break. “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years,” he wrote in a social media post last Saturday, “this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.”

His last dive was far from his deepest. In 2021, Mr. Harding made a record-setting trip to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, in the western Pacific Ocean. A four hour, 15-minute drop of 36,000 feet, the trek took him nearly three times deeper than the site of the Titanic. According to a media report at the time, only 18 people had ever journeyed to the area, known as the Challenger Deep. By comparison, 24 astronauts have orbited or landed on the moon.

Mr. Harding knew the risks. “If something goes wrong, you are not coming back,” he said in an interview after the dive in 2021.

Conditions inside the submersible were not plush. Images from the company’s website showed a vessel with an interior like a metal tube, where passengers sat on the floor with their backs to the curved walls. There were no chairs, little room to move or stand upright, and a single viewing window , 21 inches in diameter.

Yet for some with money and a passion for adventure, the promise of a rare experience was worth the risk of death — a risk repeatedly detailed in the legal waivers signed by passengers, according to some who had made the trip.

The thrill of the outermost limits had called to Mr. Rush since childhood. In an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” in 2022, the OceanGate founder said he grew up wanting to be an astronaut and, later, a fighter pilot.

“It was about exploring,” Mr. Rush said. “It was about finding new life-forms. I wanted to be sort of the Captain Kirk. I didn’t want to be the passenger in the back. And I realized that the ocean is the universe.”

Reporting was contributed by William J. Broad , Eric Schmitt , Mike Ives , Jesus Jiménez , Daniel Victor , Anushka Patil , Emma Bubola , Jacey Fortin , Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs , Keith Collins , Jenny Gross , Anna Betts and Ben Shpigel .

Jenna Russell is The Times’s New England bureau chief, based in Boston. More about Jenna Russell

Titanic tourist submersible carrying 5 disappears on trip to see wreck in North Atlantic

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An intensifying search-and-rescue mission was underway Monday after a submersible watercraft used for tourist expeditions to view the wreck of the Titanic went missing Sunday with five people aboard in the North Atlantic, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said on Twitter that it was searching for a 21-foot submersible from the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince that lost contact about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass. The vessel “submerged Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince lost contact with them approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the vessel’s dive,” the Coast Guard wrote on Twitter.

A search-and-rescue mission is underway after a submersible used for tourist expeditions to view the Titanic wreck went missing in the North Atlantic.

One pilot or sub-commander operator and four mission specialists were on board, Coast Guard Rear Adm. John W. Mauger said in a Monday afternoon news conference. He declined to identify those on the missing vessel by name.

A C-130 aircraft is being used to conduct an aerial search both visually and with radar, according to Mauger. The Coast Guard has also coordinated with the Canadian coast guard and armed forces to deploy more assets. The Canadian coast guard also has committed a C-130 aircraft, as well as a submarine and sonar buoys to aid in the search.

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The missing vessel was designed with a 96-hour sustainment capability if there’s any emergency onboard. Mauger said officials “anticipate that there is somewhere between the 70 to full 96 hours.”

“We’re using that time, making the best use of every moment of that time to locate the vessel,” he said.

The location being searched is a “remote area” about 13,000 feet deep, making it a challenging search-and-rescue effort, he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard will continue to fly the aircraft and move additional vessels into the area over the next couple of days to help with the search.

The Guardian reported that the sub is operated by OceanGate Expeditions, a company that offers visits to the Titanic wreck .

OceanGate confirmed its vessel was missing and posted a statement on Twitter on Monday afternoon. “We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely,” the company said. “Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families.”

pic.twitter.com/JmH8e47zuI — OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 19, 2023

The Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, Canada, received a call at 9:13 p.m. Sunday from the maritime rescue coordination center in Boston requesting “assistance for the search of the overdue research sub,” said Lt. Cmdr. Len Hickey. The sub had lost contact with its surface vessel, Hickey said.

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The center provided a fixed-wing aircraft and a Canadian coast guard vessel to aid in the search.

Hickey was unable to provide more information and referred additional questions to the Coast Guard‘s Boston base, which is leading the effort.

David Concannon, an advisor to the company, said OceanGate lost contact with the sub Sunday morning. In an email to the Associated Press on Monday afternoon, he said it had a 96-hour oxygen supply. Concannon was supposed to be on the dive but had other commitments. He said officials are working to get a remotely operated vehicle that can reach a depth of about 20,000 feet to the site as soon as possible.

The Titanic , which sank in 1912, is about 13,000 feet below the surface at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 400 nautical miles off the Newfoundland coast.

According to OceanGate’s website , which worked intermittently Monday, a deep-sea voyage to view the Titanic wreck was underway.

Representatives for the Coast Guard did not immediately return repeated requests for comment, nor did OceanGate Expeditions representatives.

Titanic: For many victims, their final resting place is in Halifax, Canada

Some disaster victims’ bodies pulled from the sea came to rest in Halifax, which honors the dead.

March 27, 2013

According to its website, OceanGate is a privately owned company in Everett, Wash., established in 2009, that operates a trio of five‑person submersibles for “site survey, scientific research, film production and exploration travel.” Its vessels can reach about 13,123 feet deep, the company said.

The company offers an eight-day, seven-night voyage to the Titanic wreck, according to its website. The trip runs about $250,000, according to the site.

“Become one of the few to see the Titanic with your own eyes,” the company says on its Titanic expeditions page.

The trip sets off from and returns to the city of St. John’s in Newfoundland, and takes “intrepid travelers” aboard a submersible called the Titan to explore the site of the Titanic wreck. Dive expeditions can begin as early as Day 3, according to the website. The Titan carries up to five people, the website said.

The website states no previous dive experience is necessary but details some physical requirements for passengers, including being able to board small boats in rough seas and sit for long periods of time. Explorers must also be at least 18, the website said.

Crew Tells of Historic Mission : Ship That Found Wreck of Titanic Returns Home

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Sept. 10, 1985

Those embarking on the expedition receive a vessel orientation and safety briefing after boarding, the company said on its website.

Hamish Harding, the chairman of Action Aviation, a Dubai-based company dealing in aviation sales and acquisitions, is among those on the expedition, according to Harding’s social media posts and confirmed by Action Aviation.

The expedition left from St. Johns on Friday, Harding wrote on his Facebook page . A “weather window” had opened up, allowing for a dive to the wreck Sunday. It was likely to be the only “manned mission” this year because of the harsh winter, Harding wrote.

Action Aviation also posted on Twitter about the voyage .

“4am start this morning on the RMS Titanic Expedition Mission 5 with @oceangateexped,” Action Aviation wrote on Twitter on June 18. “The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving. Stay tuned for further updates!”

Harding wrote on Instagram that the team on the sub has “legendary explorers,” including Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a veteran and accomplished diver with more than 30 trips to the wreck site .

The Titanic was a British luxury liner that made its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, bound for New York with 2,227 passengers and crew aboard. But the vessel, then the largest in the world, rammed an iceberg and sank in the early morning hours of April 15, killing more than 1,500 people .

In September 1985, an American and French team of researchers found the liner thousands of feet down.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Alexandra E. Petri is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered trends and breaking news. She previously covered live news at the New York Times. A two-time reporting fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, she graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism and international studies.

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June 20, 2023 missing titanic sub search news.

What we covered here

• Banging sounds were heard Tuesday during the search for the missing Titan submersible , indicating “continued hope of survivors,” according to an internal government memo.
• A massive search operation is underway to find the vessel with five people on board that went missing Sunday on a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
• It’s a race against time as the US Coast Guard said the vessel had “ about 40 hours of breathable air left ” during an update at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday.
• Aboard are a British adventurer, a French diver, a Pakistani father and son and the founder of the company that operates the tour, according to social media posts, a family statement and sources.

Our live coverage of the  search for the missing Titanic sub has moved here.

Banging sounds heard during Titan search Tuesday, according to internal government memo

Crews  searching for the Titan submersible  heard banging sounds every 30 minutes Tuesday, according to an internal government memo update on the search.

Four hours later, after additional sonar devices were deployed, banging was still heard, the memo said. It was unclear when the banging was heard Tuesday or for how long, based on the memo.

A subsequent update sent Tuesday night suggested more sounds were heard, though it was not described as “banging.”

A Canadian P3 aircraft also located a white rectangular object in the water, according to that update, but another ship set to investigate was diverted to help research the acoustic feedback instead, according to that update.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Center is working to find an underwater remote operated vehicle to help assist in the search, according to the memo.

CNN has reached out to OceanGate, the US Coast Guard in Boston and Canadian authorities for comment.

Rolling Stone was first to report the news Tuesday night.

CNN’s Andy Rose and Paul Murphy contributed to this report.

OceanGate explains why the Titan submersible is not "classed"

In a 2019 blog post on OceanGate’s website, the company said most marine operations “require that chartered vessels are ‘classed’ by an independent group such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), DNV/GL, Lloyd’s Register, or one of the many others.”

This “classing” system ensures vessels are designed and built following regulations such as the number of life rafts or types of materials used.

But the Titan submersible that went missing en route to the Titanic wreck , is not classed, the blog post said. 

It said classing innovative designs often requires a multiyear approval process, which gets in the way of rapid innovation.

Classing agencies “do not ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea. The vast majority of marine (and aviation) accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure,” it said.

“Classing assures ship owners, insurers, and regulators that vessels are designed, constructed and inspected to accepted standards. Classing may be effective at filtering out unsatisfactory designers and builders, but the established standards do little to weed out subpar vessel operators – because classing agencies only focus on validating the physical vessel,” it read. 

OceanGate touted Titan's safety features, despite conflicting info over its development

In a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specifications and a hull monitoring system that he called “an unparalleled safety feature” built into the Titan submersible.

The legal representative informed the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which oversees matters related to the Titanic, of the company’s expedition plans at the time.

The filing lays out the Titan’s testing details and its specifications, including that it had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailing its 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull.

The filing said OceanGate’s vessel was the result of more than eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”

But according to the University of Washington, the laboratory never dealt with design or engineering for OceanGate’s Titan vessel. 

In a statement to CNN, Kevin Williams, the executive director of UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, said the lab’s expertise involved “only shallow water implementation,” and “the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition.”

In 2022, the legal representative updated the Virginia court on OceanGate’s expeditions in another court filing.  

There were no submersible-related issues that canceled dives on the third, fourth, or fifth missions, according to the court filing. 

CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment. 

2 previous OceanGate employees voiced safety concerns years ago about the submersible

Two former employees of OceanGate Expeditions separately brought up similar safety concerns about the thickness of the now-missing Titan submersible’s hull when they were employed by the company years ago.

A statement from a research lab appears to show conflicting information about the engineering and testing that went into the development of the vessel.

David Lochridge worked as an independent contractor for OceanGate in 2015, then as an employee between 2016 and 2018, according to court filings. He served as the company’s director of marine operations.

The company terminated his employment and sued Lochridge and his wife in 2018, claiming he shared confidential information, misappropriated trade secrets and used the company for immigration assistance then manufactured a reason to be fired. The lawsuit noted that Lochridge is not an engineer, calling him a submersible pilot and a diver.

In a counter filing, Lochridge claimed he was wrongfully terminated for raising concerns about the safety and testing of the Titan.

Lochridge’s countersuit says he was tasked by OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush , to perform an inspection of the submersible. It says Lochridge brought up concerns that no non-destructive testing had been performed on the Titan’s hull to check for “delaminations, porosity and voids of sufficient adhesion of the glue being used due to the thickness of the hull.” 

The suit says that when Lochridge raised the issue, he was told that no equipment existed to perform such a test.

The lawsuit was settled and dismissed in November 2018. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and Lochridge could not be reached for comment.

Court filings from the company indicate there was much additional testing after Lochridge’s time at OceanGate, and it’s unclear whether any of his concerns were addressed as the vessel was developed.  

Another former employee of OceanGate who worked briefly for the company during the same time period as Lochridge spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. 

He said he became concerned when the carbon fiber hull of the Titan arrived, echoing Lochridge’s concerns about its thickness and adhesion in his conversation with CNN. He said the hull had only been built to 5 inches thick, while he said company engineers told him they had expected it to be 7 inches thick.

The former employee worked at the submersible company for two and a half months in 2017; he was an operations technician who assisted with towing submersibles out into the ocean and preparing them for the diving operation. 

He said more concerns were raised by contractors and employees during his time at OceanGate and Rush became defensive and shied away from answering questions during all-staff meetings. When the former employee raised concerns that OceanGate could potentially be violating a US law relating to Coast Guard inspections directly to Rush, the CEO outright dismissed them, the former employee said, and that’s when he resigned.

US Coast Guard releases image showing search pattern for missing submersible

The US Coast Guard released an image showing the search pattern for the Titan submersible — and provided an update on existing and incoming resources that are expected to aid in the search for the underwater vessel.

A New York Air National Guard C-130 arrived at about 4 p.m. to assist in the search, joining “Deep Energy,” a Bahamian research vessel that arrived around 7 a.m., and was conducting remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operations, the Coast Guard said.

The following additional assets are also en route to the scene, the  US Coast Guard said :

·         Canadian CGS John Cabot

·         Canadian CGS Ann Harvey

·         Canadian CGS Terry Fox

·         Canadian CGS Atlantic Merlin (ROV) 

·         Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic 

·         Commercial Vessel Skandi Vinland (ROV) 

·         French Research Vessel L’Atalante (ROV) 

·         His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Glace Bay (mobile decompression chamber and medical personnel) 

What could have gone wrong on the submersible?

It remains unclear what happened to the missing submersible on Sunday when it lost contact with crews on the surface on its way down to the Titanic wreckage.

But with no word from the vessel, experts say the odds don’t look good — and there are a few things that could have gone wrong.

• One major risk is a power cut, which could have caused the loss of communication, said Eric Fusil, a submarine expert and associate professor at the University of Adelaide. Some submersibles have a second source of energy, in case the primary electrical system fails — but it’s not clear if the Titan had power backups when it went missing, he said.
• A short circuit could cause a fire on board, which not only would ruin the vessel’s systems but create toxic fumes in a small, enclosed space — a major danger to those aboard, he said.
• Flooding is always a risk, and at the depths of the Titanic, the immense pressure would cause most vessels to implode, Fusil said. The Titan is equipped with an innovative new safety feature that monitors pressure on the vessel, and triggers a warning to the pilot if any issues are detected, according to the vessel operator.
• Finally, there’s the danger of entanglement. With strong currents underwater and a field of Titanic debris on the ocean floor, there’s a chance the submersible could be trapped or find its path blocked, Fusil said.

Couple filed lawsuit against OceanGate CEO in February demanding refund after Titanic trip was canceled

OceanGate Expeditions CEO Richard Stockton Rush was sued in February by a Florida couple seeking a refund for a trip to see the Titanic wreckage they claim was booked with OceanGate but never happened.  

According to the lawsuit, Marc and Sharon Hagle of Winter Park, Florida, signed a contract with Rush to go on a manned submersible dive expedition to the RMS Titanic on Cyclops 2. In November of 2016, the Hagles paid a deposit of $10,000 each, which they say they were told was fully refundable. 

But after paying a total of $210,258 and seeing their expedition postponed many times, the lawsuit says they were unable to get a refund. The lawsuit alleges fraudulent inducement and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. 

Rush is on board the submersible that went missing on Sunday. CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment on the lawsuit. The online docket for Florida’s 9th Judicial Circuit shows no response to the lawsuit at this time.  

The lawsuit states that the Hagles were each due to pay a $40,000 “milestone payment 15 days after Cyclops 2 made its first dive, approximately around October 2017. Under their contract, a $55,129 final payment each was due on February 1, 2018, which would have been approximately four months before the scheduled date of their expedition,” the lawsuit says.

The couple, who were on  Blue Origin’s 2022 space mission , became skeptical the expedition would take place and were contemplating requesting a refund, the lawsuit states.

It says Rush visited the couple in Florida in 2017 and explained the design of Cyclops 2 to them as well as the details of the expedition and crew that would be manning the submersible. He also told them Cyclops 2 would be ready to dive to the wreckage as planned, in June 2018, the lawsuit adds. The lawsuit states that Rush confirmed at that time that they would receive a full refund if they wanted.

The Hagles’ lawsuit claims they received a second contract after Rush’s visit that required them to pay the full balance for the expedition, a total of $190,258 more, which they wired to OceanGate. A month after they signed the new contract and wired the money, the name of Cyclops 2 was changed to Titan, the lawsuit says. 

The June 2018 expedition was canceled two months later. The lawsuit alleges that the reason they were given was that OceanGate had not had sufficient time to do tests to certify the Titan could reach the depth of the Titanic wreckage, the lawsuit claims.  

The new expedition was scheduled for July 2019, but canceled the month before, first saying the support vessel refused to participate and later citing “equipment failure,” according to the suit. The Hagles claim they were then told their new expedition date would be some time in 2020. 

The couple then requested a refund of the $210,258 they had paid. 

The Hagles claim that though they had been told by OceanGate’s expedition manager that the company was working on a “full refund plan,” they received communication from OceanGate demanding they participate in a July 2021 expedition. If they failed to do so, they would not be entitled to a refund or credit, the lawsuit says they were told.

The couple is asking the court for the return of their monies paid as well as punitive damages.

When reached by CNN, the Hagles’ attorney, Ronny Edwards Jr., declined to comment on the pending litigation, but said, “More important than the litigation, however, is the safe return of the entire Titan crew. My thoughts and prayers are with the crew and their families.”

CNN’s Ross Levitt contributed to this report. 

"Very few assets in the world that can go down that deep." Expert says rescue would be complex mission

If search crews locate the missing submersible deep in the ocean, authorities will face a highly complex mission to recover the craft and any survivors, an expert said Tuesday.  

McCord said sophisticated naval craft could reach the wreckage of the Titanic at a pace of about 1,000 feet per hour. At more than 12,000 feet below sea level, diving and surfacing could take a full day.  

At these depths, a remote craft would be able to explore a limited area rather than cruise along the ocean floor, he said.

“When you’re going deep, you usually go up and down like an elevator,” McCord said. “When you’re going shallow, you can go further like a nuclear submarine.” 

Once crews have narrowed their search, they could deploy a cargo van-sized remote-operated craft to locate the submersible. The remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, is tethered to a surface ship with a two-inch thick cable to provide power and communication. The ROV could be moved to a Canadian port by military aircraft, loaded onto a ship by crane, and then steamed to the search site, McCord said.  

US military ROVs have electric motors and cameras, but do not have the capacity to lift the missing vessel, McCord said.  

Rescuing the missing craft from the ocean depths would require a second, more specialized vehicle known as the Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System, he said. FADOSS includes specialized shock absorbers to handle lifting loads of up to 60,000 pounds without snapping its cable to the surface.  

The US Navy said that it is sending a FADOSS to assist in the search and rescue efforts. It is expected to arrive in St. Johns Tuesday night, a spokesperson said.

NY Times: Submersible industry leaders were concerned about OceanGate's "experimental" approach

Industry leaders expressed concerns five years ago about OceanGate Expeditions’ “experimental approach” to the Titan submersible and its planned trip to the site of the Titanic wreckage, the New York Times reported Tuesday

The Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of  the Marine Technology Society  penned a letter to OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush in 2018, it said.

Specifically, it expressed concern over the company’s compliance with a maritime risk assessment certification known as DNV-GL. 

“Your marketing material advertises that the TITAN design will meet or exceed the DNV-GL safety standards, yet it does not appear that Oceangate has the intention of following DNV-GL class rules,” the letter said.

The leaders wrote that portraying the Titan this way is misleading to the public and “breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold.”

OceanGate has not responded to a request for comment on the letter. 

The company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, is one of the five passengers onboard the missing Titan submersible, a source told CNN on Tuesday.

The missing submersible has less than 40 hours of air left. Here's where the search stands today

The five people onboard the submersible that went missing near the wreckage of the Titanic have less than 40 hours of breathable air left, according to the US Coast Guard.

The urgent search has not yielded anything so far, but officials are looking on both on the surface and underwater in the remote North Atlantic area. More equipment and personnel are expected to arrive soon, the Coast Guard said Tuesday.

Here’s where things stand :

• Some background: The submersible was part of an eight-day expedition to the Titanic conducted by OceanGate Expeditions . The search is focused around the site of the shipwreck, about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. The submersible began its two-hour descent Sunday morning . It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, less than two hours into its descent, officials said. Search operations began later that day.
• Latest on search efforts: The US Coast Guard is working “around the clock” to try to find the missing submersible, Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District Response Department, said in a briefing Tuesday. In addition to looking on the surface of the water, the team has underwater search capability on the scene, another Coast Guard official said. Deep sea-mapping company Magellan, most famously known for its  one-of-a-kind deep sea imagery of the Titanic , is also working to get its equipment to the site . Weather and fog complicated aerial search efforts Monday, according to officials. But, conditions cleared up on Tuesday.
• Collaborative assistance: The US Navy is sending experts and a “Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System” — which can lift small vessels — to assist, a spokesperson said Tuesday. The US military is moving military and commercial assets , according to the Coast Guard and US Transportation Command. France said it has dispatched a ship with an underwater robot .

Here’s a look at how deep the submersible was going:

• Who is inside: There are five people in the submersible, according to multiple authorities. One of them is Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate, the company leading the voyage, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan. The others are British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
• Family and friends of passengers: A friend of Harding told CNN that the explorer is “larger than life ” and would be “calm and collected” in an emergency. A colleague of Nargeolet said the community of explorers and scientists is “in shock.” Another friend of the French submariner said that he had been to the Titanic wreckage dozens of times and dedicated his professional life to its history.

Missing submariner has been to Titanic wreck dozens of times, friend says

A friend of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the passengers on the missing submersible, described the French ex-Navy officer as someone with deep knowledge of the Titanic and a person who accepted the risk that came with these expeditions.

Mathieu Johann, a friend of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, said he hopes its an end “like in the movies, he’ll reappear very quickly to reassure us all.”

Johann is a Director at Harper Collins France and worked with Nargeolet on his book about the Titanic.

Nargeolet “became attached to its history” and the mysteries that may be inside the wreckage, he said.

“I know that his big thing is trying to find out what’s in the Titanic’s safe. I hope with all my heart that one day he’ll manage to penetrate that vault, which remains full of mystery 4000 meters under the sea,” Johann said. “He’s also been married to the Titanic for 30 years. So I hope he’s still going to teach us lots of things because he’s a great man, humble and passionate and fascinating,” he added.

Johann described Nargeolet as someone who “risked his life all his life” and that although he knew diving to the Titanic wreck is risky, it was just part of his daily life.

King Charles III requests to be kept fully up to date about missing submersible

King Charles III has requested to be kept fully up to date regarding the submersible that went missing on a trip to view wreckage of the Titanic, a royal source said.

Shahzada Dawood, who is one of the people on board the missing submersible, is a longtime supporter of The Prince’s Trust International and The British Asian Trust, according to the source.

The source said the King’s thoughts and prayers are with the Dawood family, as well as those involved in the attempted recovery operation.

US Navy sending experts and deep ocean salvage system to aid in submersible search

The US Navy is sending subject matter experts and a “Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS)” to assist in the search and rescue of a tour sub that has been missing since Sunday, a spokesperson said Tuesday. 

The FADOSS is a “motion compensated lift system designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels,” the spokesperson said.

A Navy information page on the FADOSS says it can lift up to 60,000 pounds. 

The equipment and personnel are expected to arrive at St. John’s by Tuesday night and will be in support of the US Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said Tuesday that the search has not yielded anything so far, but it is continuing to look both on the surface and underwater for the missing submersible. Officials estimated that the crew onboard has “about 40 hours of breathable air left.”

Friend of missing passenger recalls conversation he had before submersible trip

Ret. US Air Force Col. Terry Virts said his friend, who is a passenger on the missing submersible, was “very excited” about the trip to view the wreckage from the Titanic.

Virts recalled the “brief” conversation via text message with Hamish Harding ahead of the voyage.

Virts described Harding as an adventurer who had been on trips including the South Pole, the Mariana Trench and outer space.

“While he’s down at the bottom of the ocean waiting for rescue, he’s probably planning out his next exploration adventure,” Virts said.

He said Harding’s past adventuring experiences could help to serve him in his current situation.

He added that the calmer the five passengers are in the submersible, “the longer their oxygen supply will last and they certainly realize that.”

Coast Guard officials said Tuesday they estimated there is “about 40 hours of breathable air left.”

US military moving military and commercial assets to help submersible search efforts

The US military is moving military and commercial assets to help in the ongoing search efforts for the missing submersible, according to the Coast Guard and US Transportation Command.

The Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving is working with US Transportation Command to bring “more capable assets” into the search, Capt. Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District said Tuesday. The assets will be moved first to St. John’s in Canada and then taken to the search area. 

The Navy command has advanced remotely operated dive vehicles capable of operating at the extreme depths required in this search effort. 

“The Navy is working to coordinate assets with the USCG and the unified command. We will give you more details as we get assets and personnel in place,” according to a Navy spokesperson.

There will also be three flights from Buffalo, New York, to St. John’s today carrying commercial cargo that may be able to assist in the search and rescue efforts, a spokesman for TRANSCOM told CNN.

It is unclear at this time what assets or equipment are on the flights or to whom they belong. 

“U.S. Transportation Command is coordinating authorized planning and support of DoD assistance and transport of assets in the location and recovery of a disabled commercial-owned manned submersible in the Atlantic Ocean,” a TRANSCOM spokesperson said in a statement.

The defense department is also assisting, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said.

Two C-130 aircraft were assisting in search and rescue flights over the area on Monday, and an Air National Guard C-130 would be joining the efforts Tuesday, she said.

“[B]y the end of today, we would have committed three C-130s to conducting search and rescue flights,” Singh said. “In addition to that, the Navy has been in touch with the Coast Guard and is working to provide personnel such as subject matter experts and assets as quickly as possible.” 

“I believe that we are doing everything we can in terms of surveying the area and that’s been the focus of the department right now,” she added.

Retired US admiral says submersible search time will impact outcome 

The more time passes in the search for the missing submersible, “the less likely a positive outcome will occur,” Ret. U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen said Tuesday.

Mullen, who is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that those on board of the missing sub will be “trying to conserve as much oxygen as possible.”

Coast Guard officials said Tuesday they estimate there is “about 40 hours of breathable air left” in the missing submersible that went missing on its way to view the wreckage from the Titanic.

The search will be complicated if the sub isn’t emitting any sound. “Because it’s probably not making noise… to find it acoustically will be a challenge,” Harris said.

Biden closely watching search efforts for missing submersible, White House says

US President Joe Biden is “watching events closely” surrounding the missing submersible near the wreckage of the Titanic, the White House said Tuesday.

National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby pointed to the ongoing, collaborative search and rescue efforts by the Coast Guard, Canadian officials and other agencies. He said, “Certainly the president wants the Coast Guard to continue to participate in that.” 

Kirby said the US Navy is also on standby “should they be needed because they have some deep-water capabilities that the Coast Guard wouldn’t necessarily have.”

Expert tells CNN recovery will happen in phases if rescuers can locate the missing submersible

Rick Murcar, owner of Aquatic Adventures of Florida, described the phases of recovery that rescuers will go through if they can locate the missing submersible.

“That’s going to be a long process,” he added.

Coast Guard officials on Tuesday afternoon estimated there is “about 40 hours of breathable air left” in the submersible, which went missing Sunday on a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

So far, the Coast Guard and its partners’ search efforts have “not yielded any results,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District Response Department, said Tuesday.

Visibility for aerial search has improved today, Coast Guard official says

Weather conditions and fog complicated aerial search efforts Monday, the Coast Guard said, but conditions are expected to clear up as the search continues on Tuesday.

The Coast Guard has deployed several aircraft to search the surface of the water for the missing submersible. Canada also said it has mobilized planes to help.

Simpson said Coast Guard aircraft crews receive specialized training to be able to spot objects in the ocean in scenarios like this.

Search area for missing submersible expands to underwater, US Coast Guard commander says

While a lot of the search for the missing submersible has been focused on the surface of the water, the team now has underwater search capability on scene, said US Coast Guard First District Commander Rear Adm. John Mauger.

The Canadian Air Craft, USCG aircraft and New York Air National Guard aircraft have been flying patterns roughly the size of Connecticut on the surface of the water, he told CNN.

Mauger said he met with unified command last night which includes the US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Armed Forces as well as Ocean Gate expedition, the company that owns and runs the missing submersible.

Ocean Gate, having the most familiarity with the site, and knowing where their submersible was operating, is helping to set priorities, he added.

The New York Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing is assisting the US Coast Guard search and rescue operation for the missing Titanic submersible, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced in a statement Tuesday.

“The women and men of New York’s Air National Guard are always ready to lend a helping hand,” Hochul said. “I commend the members of the 106th Rescue Wing for their efforts to assist the U.S. Coast Guard in this search and rescue operation.” 

The 106th Rescue Wing, which is based at the F.S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach on Long Island, launched an HC-130J Compat King search and rescue aircraft on Monday afternoon at the request of the Coast Guard, Hochul said in the statement. 

The 13 Air National Guard members on board, including a team of pararescue jumpers, flew 900 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean and searched a designated area using forward-looking infrared radar and onboard observers, the statement said.

The plane returned to base early this morning, and the wing has been asked to assist in the search again this afternoon.

Missing sub has "about 40 hours of breathable air left," Coast Guard says

Coast Guard officials estimate there is “about 40 hours of breathable air left” in the missing submersible that went missing on its way to view wreckage from the Titanic.

The vessel lost contact 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive Sunday, the US Coast Guard said. At that time, officials estimated it had 96 hours of life support.

“We know there’s about 40 hours of breathable air left based on that initial report,” Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District, said at a Tuesday news conference.

Five people are on board the missing sub.

Watch here:

Coast Guard: Titanic tour sub search efforts "have not yielded any results"

So far, the Coast Guard and its partners’ “search efforts have not yielded any results” in the hunt for the missing Titanic tour submersible, Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District Response Department, said Tuesday.

Frederick said the Coast Guard has been coordinating with other agencies since Sunday, including the US Navy and Canadian Coast Guard, to conduct the search.

On Tuesday, the vessel Deep Energy, a 194-meter pipe-laying vessel with underwater capabilities, arrived on scene and rendezvoused with the Polar Prince, the vessel the submersible launched from to commence a dive at the last known position of the sub and at the approximate position of the Titanic wreck, Capt. Frederick said at a news conference.

He said other vessels are currently en route to join the effort, including some privately owned vessels that are “making preparations” to help with the “very complex” search.

The Canadian vessel John Cabot is expected to arrive this evening, along with other Canadian Coast Guard vessels.

The US Navy’s supervisor salvage and diving command is working with US Transportation Command to bring additional assets, he said.

Vessels will be staged at St. John’s in Canada, Frederick said.

Coast Guard is working around the clock to conduct complex search for missing submersible

The US Coast Guard is working “around the clock” to try to find the missing submersible with five people on board, an official said Tuesday.

The submersible was reported missing on Sunday after it lost contact and didn’t return to the surface at its expected time.

Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District, said it has been a “complex search” that requires specialized equipment.

The Coast Guard doesn’t have all of the expertise and equipment that they need, which is why they are calling on other agencies and countries for help, Frederick said, including the United States Navy and the Canadian Armed Forces.

“The unified command brings that expertise and additional capability together to maximize effort in solving this very complex problem,” he said at a news briefing Tuesday. 

NOW: Officials gives an update on the search and rescue mission for the missing submersible

The Coast Guard is giving an update on the search efforts for five people onboard a missing submersible near the wreckage of the Titanic.

Capt. Jamie Frederick, of the First Coast Guard District which is coordinating the effort, is expected to speak.

The search is happening about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. The Coast Guard said in a tweet earlier Tuesday that 10,000 square miles have been searched so far.

Aircraft and other equipment are looking for the submersible on the surface and underwater.

France sends ship with underwater robot to help with search for missing Titanic tour submersible

French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered the dispatch of the research ship Atalante to join the international search for the missing Titanic tour submersible, the French government announced Tuesday.

The ship is equipped with an underwater robot that can reach as deep as 4,000 meters and the robot’s operation team has departed from the French city of Toulon, according to Berville.

“This is a race of time that started last night (Monday) and France has responded to the calls from American authorities,” he said.

OceanGate founder is also aboard the missing Titanic tour sub, source says

The fifth passenger aboard the submersible bound for the Titanic wreckage is Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate, the company leading the voyage, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan.

Multiple authorities have said there were five people aboard the missing submersible.

According to CNN reporting, Rush is aboard the submersible, alongside four others:

• British businessman Hamish Harding
• Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood
• French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet

CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment but has not received an immediate response.

What the tour company has said about the search for the missing sub

OceanGate Expeditions says it is “deeply grateful” for the “extensive assistance” it is receiving from multiple government agencies in search of a submersible visiting the wreck site of the Titanic.

The company, which operates tours to the wreckage site, said in a Monday night statement that “for some time” it has been “unable to establish communications” with the submersible.

Here’s the complete statement:

Some more context: The submersible was part of an eight-day journey conducted by OceanGate Expeditions. The trip is based out of Newfoundland, with participants first traveling 400 nautical miles to the wreck site, which is about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The submersible began its two-hour descent to the wreck on Sunday morning. It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said.

Search operations began later that day.

It’s still not clear what happened to the submersible, why it lost contact and how close to the Titanic it was when it went missing.

The Titanic wreckage lies around 12,500 feet below sea level. Here's a look at the path to see it

The Titan submersible, a small vessel carrying five people, was on a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic when it lost contact with the Polar Prince, the vessel that transported it to the North Atlantic Ocean.

The wreckage lies around 12,500 feet below sea level — that’s about 10 times the height of the Empire State Building.

Here’s a look at what the descent to the wreckage site is like:

10,000 square miles have been searched so far in the hunt for the missing Titanic-bound sub, Coast Guard says

The US Coast Guard said that 10,000 square miles have been searched for the missing Titanic-bound submersible as of Tuesday morning.

A Canadian P3 Aurora aircraft has arrived to help conduct sonar searches, the Coast Guard tweeted . 

Two research vessels, R/V Polar Prince and R/V Deep Energy, are continuing surface searches as well.

US Coast Guard will give an update on the search for missing submersible this afternoon

The US Coast Guard will hold a 1 p.m. ET news conference to discuss the search efforts to locate a missing submersible that was en route to the Titanic wreckage, it said in a press release.

The Coast Guard and partner agencies are continuing their search Tuesday for the sub, which is carrying five people, after the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince lost contact with it on Sunday.

The submersible — a watercraft that, unlike a submarine, needs a mother ship to launch it — was on a dive about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, the release said.

Here's a timeline of the missing sub's whereabouts

The Titan  submersible  went missing while it was on a tour of the wreckage of the Titanic. Here is the timeline that was set for the vessel , according to Miawpukek Maritime Horizon Services, which co-owns the Polar Prince, the support ship that helped launch Titan.

All times are in Atlantic Daylight Time, which is 1.5 hours ahead of Eastern Time:

Friday, June 16: The Polar Prince departs St. John’s, Newfoundland

Saturday, June 17: The Polar Prince arrives at the dive site

Sunday, June 18:

• 9 a.m.: The dive operations starts.
• 11:47 a.m.: The last communication between the vessel and surface staff of OceanGate, the group that was conducting the expedition, is recorded.
• 6:10 p.m.: This is the time the vessel was originally scheduled to resurface.
• 6:35 pm.: Authorities are notified and a response operation is initiated.

Friend of explorer on the missing vessel says he is "larger than life"

A friend of Hamish Harding, one of the people missing onboard a Titanic expedition vessel, told CNN Tuesday that the explorer is “larger than life.”

“Hamish is larger than life. He lives exploration. He is an explorer to the core of his soul. He has been to the bottom of planet earth in the Mariana Trench…he’s even been in space. We circumnavigated the planet together…the north and south pole, and set the world speed record,” Jannicke Mikkelsen, a fellow explorer, said.

Mikkelsen said Harding would be “calm and collected” in an emergency and that his experience would have prepared him for any difficulties. 

Mikkelsen said the vessel Harding is on is “a self-rescue vessel” with seven systems of unloading weight so it can ascend to the surface by itself if necessary.

“The only way it couldn’t do that is if it was trapped — for instance, in the wreck of the Titanic or maybe as something as simple as a fishing net,” Mikkelsen said.

“My biggest concern is that Hamish and the rest of the crew aboard…are trapped in a metal can at the bottom of the ocean where the atmospheric pressure is 400 times that of here at ground level. There is no way we could possibly have a manned rescue at that sort of depth. My fear is that they cannot self-rescue and appear to the surface by themselves,” Mikkelsen said.

Action Aviation, the company owned by Harding, said Tuesday that both they and Harding’s family are “very grateful for all the kind messages of concern and support from our friends and colleagues,” according to a press release from the company.

“We are thankful for the continued efforts of the authorities and companies that have stepped in to aid in the rescue efforts. We put great faith and trust in their expertise,” Action Aviation said. “The team at Action Aviation are extremely proud of Hamish and we look forward to welcoming him home.”

Here's where the search for the missing sub is unfolding

A massive search operation is underway to find a submersible with five people on board that went missing on a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

The Titanic wreckage sits at the bottom of the ocean nearly 13,000 feet below the surface southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Here’s a look at a map of the area:

View some of the last images of the submersible and its crew before it went missing

A massive search operation is underway to find the submersible with five people on board that went missing on a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

See some of the last pictures taken of the crew before they made their descent in the video below:

Deep-sea mapping company ready to join search efforts, but is being held up due to transport issues

Deep sea-mapping company Magellan, most famously known for its  one-of-a-kind deep sea imagery of the Titanic , is fighting against the clock to try and get involved in the search and rescue efforts underway to locate the submersible that’s been missing in the Atlantic since Sunday—but a key transport issue   holding them back.

Magellan Chair David Thompson told CNN that his team is familiar with the site of the wreck and received written notice from OceanGate Expeditions, the company running the expedition to the Titanic, to mobilize early Monday “by all means necessary — time is of the essence.” 

CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment.

But it needs an aircraft — specifically, a C-17 Globemaster III military cargo jet — with the ability to transport its deep-sea diving equipment, which is located in the UK, and deliver it to Canada in order to launch its operation.

Thompson said the US Air Force or UK Royal Air Force have not gotten back to Magellan letting them know if or when a plane can be procured to use to transport the equipment they need to Canada to embark on rescue efforts

Most of the equipment needed for the deep-sea dive is in Jersey, located in the Channel Islands off the coast of France, with some other equipment in Aberdeen, Thompson said. 

There’s an element of serendipity at play in all this, as Thompson said that the equipment needed for this deep-sea expedition is normally not docked in the Channel Islands, where the company is based.

“It’s normally on a vessel floating around the world, quite frankly. But by pure coincidence, we had it off whilst we were changing vessels and it just happened to be in Jersey at this point as opposed to on a boat in the middle of the sea,” he explained.

The quickest the Magellan team say they and their equipment could be at the site of the search and rescue operation underway in the Atlantic would be somewhere between 24 and 30 hours.  

The missing   21-foot vessel has life support for up to 96 hours, according to the  OceanGate website . US Coast Guard officials estimated Monday afternoon that they anticipate that the vessel has somewhere between 70 to 96 hours of emergency oxygen available for the passengers onboard. 

CNN has reached out to the UK Royal Air Force as well as the US Air Force for comment. 

Colleague of submariner on missing vessel says the community is in shock

A colleague of the French submariner onboard the missing Titanic dive vessel told CNN Tuesday that their community is “in shock.”

Gallo called Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who is one of five people on board the missing vessel his “closest colleague” and someone who is “the best” at deep-sea searching.

As the search for the missing vessel continues, Gallo said “time is against us at this point.”

The depth of water where the search is being conducted is “a whole different world,” Gallo said, but added that “everything that can be done, is being done.” 

“You begin on the surface in a light blue, pretty color blue that we’re familiar with. It takes two and a half hours to get to the bottom roughly, and you start to drift down slowly through that water column. You leave the blue behind. It gets medium blue, deep blue, dark blue, and then black for about two hours. And this is a place that’s been eternally cold and pressure is building,” Gallo said.

Search area for submersible should see fair weather for the next few days

Weather in the search area for the submersible in the North Atlantic is generally good for the next several days. A weak cold front moved through the area on Monday, leading to some rain showers. As this front continues to move away from the area, chances of any showers will diminish.

The search area can expect partly cloudy skies, southwest winds of 20 to 30 knots (23-34 mph) and wave heights up to 9 feet on Tuesday. These conditions are average for the area this time of year. Both air and sea surface temperatures are in the 50s.

High pressure will build in the area, leading to clear skies and relatively calm conditions through the rest of the week.

Sunrise for the search area is just before 4 a.m. ET with sunset around 7 p.m. ET.

US Coast Guard searched area "about the size of Connecticut" for missing sub overnight, commander says

The US Coast Guard searched an area “about the size of Connecticut” overnight for the submersible gone missing with five people inside, US Coast Guard First District Commander Rear Admiral John Mauger said.

As the search continues Tuesday morning, the unified command team is expanding its capabilities to be able to search under the water as well, Mauger told ABC Tuesday. “We have a commercial vessel that’s on scene now, that has remote operated vehicles, that will give us the ability to search under the water as well.”

The unified command is also using a P-3 aircraft from the Canadian Armed Forces, which has been flying during the last 24 hours, dropping sonar buoys to listen for any sounds from the submersible.

“We also have vessels on scene now that [have] the capability to listen with their SONAR, and so if they are making sound, that’s certainly one of the ways that we’re going to use to locate,” Mauger added.

Family confirms French submariner among the passengers

French submariner and ex-Navy officer, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, is among the five people missing aboard a submersible exploring the Titanic wreck, his family confirmed to CNN affiliate BFMTV Tuesday. 

It was previously thought that Nargeolet was among the passengers after fellow “mission specialist” British businessman and adventurer Hamish Harding referenced the Frenchman in a post prior to the expedition launch.

The French Foreign Office has said the ministry is not in a position to confirm his disappearance, a spokesperson said.

Harding had posted on social media Saturday saying that Nargeolet was scheduled to be on Sunday’s dive with him.

Nargeolet led several expeditions to the Titanic and supervised the recovery of many artifacts from the wreck, according to the  E/M Group , where Nargeolet was director of underwater research.

"Everything that can be done is being done," expert says

As the search for the missing submersible continues, David Gallo, senior adviser for Strategic Initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc., told CNN This Morning about what it’s like to journey down to the Titanic wreck. 

“It’s a whole different world,” he explained, adding that it “takes two and a half hours to get to the bottom roughly.”

When asked about the round-the-clock efforts to locate the Titan vessel, Gallo was frank in his assessment.

“Certainly, time is against us at this point. The only thing that we can say is that everything that can be done is being done. That includes the coast guard at the surface, listening a bit beneath the surface. And then assembling right now are some of the best robotic people… to respond right away if they do find that submarine.”

What it’s like inside the missing vessel

Officials are racing against the clock to locate the civilian submersible that had five people aboard when it went missing Sunday.

CNN’s Gabe Cohen has previously reported on the operator OceanGate Expeditions and had toured the Titan vessel out of the water during his time at CNN affiliate KOMO in 2018.

Speaking to CNN This Morning, Cohen said he recalled being “blown away by how simple” the onboard tech seemed.

“It’s this tiny vessel, quite cramped and small. You have to sit inside of it, shoes off… It is operated… by a gaming controller, what essentially looks like a PlayStation controller,” he explained.

“It could dive 13,000 feet down into the ocean and handle 150 million pounds of pressure that it would feel on the ocean floor.

The company was founded in 2009 by its current CEO Stockton Rush. Cohen explained that the company has conducted many science-driven expeditions to various shipwrecks, not just the Titanic, over the years.

While discussing the use of consumer-friendly products used onboard, like the game controller, Cohen said that he’d asked OceanGate about it. “They also stressed that the carbon fiber structure of Titan could reliably pull off a mission like this. They did not spare any expense or cut any corners to pull that off - that is what they repeatedly said to me.”

He continued, “I interviewed Stockton Rush several times. Not just him but his staff and crew. They talked about safety over and over and how confident they were in the technology of this vessel, and the other vessels they had designed over time, but we have since learned that Titan has had some issues before with communication.”

Cohen referred to a CBS report that last year the vessel was lost for more than two hours unable to get messages from the surface, which it relies on to figure out where to go there’s no GPS onboard. 

Who’s involved in the search for the sub?

An all-out search is underway to find the submersible missing off the coast of Newfoundland. 

The Canadian Coast Guard is helping the United States with the search for the vessel with the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre Boston coordinating the response.

Contact with the vessel was lost Sunday.

“Right now, our capability is limited to sonar buoys and listening for sound. But, you know, we are working very hard to increase the capability.”

Mauger said on Monday at 4:30 p.m. ET that the missing sub was designed with a “96-hour sustainment capability if there was an emergency on board,” and “we anticipate there’s somewhere between 70 and the full 96 hours available at this point.”

Here’s what we know about the urgent search and rescue operation underway:

• The US Coast Guard has told CNN it has a ship on the scene as well as aircraft, including C-130 Hercules planes. Canadian ships and planes have also joined the search.
• C-130s are four-engine aircraft that can operate long-range patrols and long endurance missions. Basically, they can stay airborne for hours at a time and search the surface of the water in case there is any sort of debris or spot the submersible if it is floating on top of the water without the ability to communicate.
• Canada has also launched a P-8 Poseidon aircraft. This is effectively a sub hunter, designed to search underwater for the mass of an enemy submarine. In this case, the difficulty may be in locating the much smaller submersible. Part of the way it searches is by dropping sonar buoys into the water to try and pick up a sound or acoustic signature that may be coming from the submersible. If a few of these are in the water and they all hear a target, that data could be used to try and triangulate the source.
• Also involved is the Polar Prince, the Canadian research vessel that transported the missing submersible to the site of the Titanic wreckage.

The Titanic lies at close to 12,500 feet, more than two miles below the surface, and a depth that experts have said that could complicate any rescue mission.

CNN’s Rob Frehse and Celina Tebor contributed to this post.

The Titanic's tragic story has intrigued generations of explorers, historians and viewers

When RMS Titanic set sail on April 10, 1912, she was the largest passenger ship in service and considered to be “unsinkable.”

But just days later, Titanic’s celebrated maiden voyage turned into a disaster when she suffered a catastrophic collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank less than three hours later.

More than 1,500 people died in the accident.

More than a century after the ship went down, researchers and historians are still captivated by its story. Sea investigators and filmmakers are still trying to map the wreck and glean more about what happened that fateful day.

Read more here:

Pakistani conglomerate urges public to avoid speculation as rescue efforts continue

The family of businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Sulaiman , confirmed earlier Tuesday that they were two of the five people onboard the missing submersible.

Dawood is the vice chairman of Engro Corporation Limited, one of Pakistan’s largest conglomerates, that has “a diverse portfolio of businesses across… energy and related infrastructure, agricultural outputs, petrochemicals and telecommunication infrastructure,” according to its website.

In a statement, Engro said all it knew was “that contact was lost” and urged the public to avoid speculation while rescue efforts continue.

Here’s the full statement:

Dawood is also a trustee of the SETI Institute in California, according to a biography on its website. He is also vice chairman of Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group and resides in the United Kingdom with his wife and two children, according to the biography.

The British Asian Trust said its “heartfelt thoughts” were with the Dawood family in a Twitter post.

"Innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm," OceanGate website says

Most chartered vessels, whether oil tankers or commercial ships, are “classed” by independent groups that set safety standards, according to OceanGate Expeditions, the company operating the Titanic wreckage tour.

But the tour operator claims the Titan, the missing submersible, is not classed because the technology being used is so new it has not yet been reviewed and incorporated into existing standards.

It added that organizations can take years to review and approve new standards, and that other OceanGate vessels do have approved classing.

What's the difference between a submersible and a submarine?

A submersible, such as the missing Titan vessel, is a type of watercraft — but it has some key differences from the better-known submarine.

Unlike submarines, a submersible needs a mother ship to launch it. The Titan’s support ship was the Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaking ship, according to the ship’s co-owner Horizon Maritime.

A submarine can also stay underwater much longer, while submersibles have much fewer power reserves, according to OceanGate, the company operating the Titan expedition, in a webpage seen by CNN that is no longer available.

The Titan has 96 hours of life support, and its dives down to the Titanic wreckage usually last 10 to 11 hours, according to the site — compared to submarines that can stay underwater for months.

As of Monday afternoon, Coast Guard officials estimate the Titan has 70 to 96 hours of oxygen left, potentially giving officials until Friday to find the vessel and rescue the five crew members aboard.

No diving experience needed for trip to Titanic wreckage, tour operator's website says

Previous diving experience is not required before joining an OceanGate expedition to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, an archived version of the operator’s website said.

To be a Mission Specialist, applicants must be at least 18 years old when the trip begins and pay $250,000, according to an archived version of the itinerary seen by CNN, which is no longer accessible on their website.

Applicants must “be able to live aboard the expedition vessel for a week” and “be able to demonstrate basic strength, balance and flexibility,” the website said.

Mission Specialists can opt-in to roles while on the eight-day trip, including helping with sonar operations, photography and videography, and communications and tracking by assisting the pilot with sub-to-surface comms.

They could also help identify undersea objects, conduct species counts and analyze the sonar data to create an image of the wreck.

Of the five onboard the submersible, there is usually one pilot, three Mission Specialists, and one content expert, according to OceanGate.

Deep ocean conditions like "another planet" as teams race to find missing sub, expert says

Rescuers are in a “race against time” to find the crew of the missing submersible, said David Gallo, senior adviser for Strategic Initiatives, RMS Titanic, which owns the exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic wreck site.

If the submersible is intact, those onboard would be faced with dwindling oxygen levels and fighting the cold, Gallo told CNN.

Hypothermia would be an issue “if the sub is still at the bottom, because in the deep ocean it is just above freezing cold,” Gallo said.

Once the submersible is located, the team could face even greater challenges in trying to rescue the crew.

It’s one thing to get there, another “to understand the situation about what the problem is with the sub and then go to work to try to extricate it from that,” Gallo added.

Locating the vessel: Gallo said the surface ship should have a good idea where the submersible’s last known position was.

“A sub will not go very far. If it has gotten into trouble on the surface it might drift a bit, but on the bottom motoring — 2 miles an hour, something like that. So the search area should be small,” Gallo said.

However, that doesn’t mean locating a small submersible in such deep and expansive waters will be easy, he said.

Why is it so hard to find the missing submersible?

As US and Canadian authorities continue search efforts overnight, it is still not clear what happened to the missing submersible, why it lost contact with crews on the surface, and where — or how deep — it might be.

Eric Fusil, a submarine expert and associate professor at the University of Adelaide, said the search is complicated by limited underwater communication methods with the submersible.

Above the water, in open air, detecting objects like the submersible can be “instantaneous” thanks to radar and other communications across long distances, he said — but underwater, “spotlight or laser beams are absorbed within a few meters.”

That means no radar or GPS is available, either, he said.

A submersible like the Titan would therefore have to rely on acoustic sound sensors and basic communication like text messages, he added.

When communications break down: When  CBS correspondent David Pogue  took a trip on the Titan to the Titanic wreck last year, he said the submersible was only guided by text messages from the surface ship. On Pogue’s trip, communications broke down during a dive and the submersible was lost for more than two hours, he said.

What the explorers aboard the missing submersible would expect on their trip

The missing submersible’s trip to the wreckage of the Titanic was the final expedition of five such tours scheduled for this year, an archived version of the operator’s website said.

OceanGate Expeditions said each eight-day trip is a “unique travel experience” that also helps the scientific community as “every dive also has a scientific objective,” according to an archived version of the itinerary seen by CNN, which is no longer accessible on their website.

Here’s an overview of the itinerary:

• Day 1: Divers arrive at St. John’s, Newfoundland, meet the expedition crew and board the ship that will take them to the Titanic wreck site. The Polar Prince was the support ship that transported the crew for this current mission.
• Day 2: The ship continues out to the dive site in the North Atlantic Ocean. The expedition leader will go over safety information and dive logistics. The science team and content experts will also help divers prepare what they may discover on the dive.
• Day 3-7: Diving begins depending on the sea conditions. Final dive checks take place before crew members board the five-person Titan submersible. Those not diving the first day “will be incorporated into other areas of dive ops — like driving the dingy, assisting the Expedition Manager, collecting media,” the website said. For those onboard the Titan, the descent takes about two hours and crew members will assist the pilot “with coms and tracking, take notes for the science team about what you see outside of the viewport, watch a movie or eat lunch,” it said. “Soon you will arrive at depth, and after some navigating across the seafloor and debris field, finally see what you’ve been waiting for: the RMS Titanic.” An onboard content expert will point out key features of the wreck and animal life while exploring the wreck, it said. “Enjoy hours of exploring the wreck and debris field before making the two-hour ascent to the surface,” the website said.
• Day 8: The ship makes the 380-mile journey back to St. Johns.

Five more expeditions were planned for 2024, according to the archived version of the itinerary.

Here's what we know about the passengers on the expedition

Though authorities haven’t publicly identified any of the five passengers on board the submersible, their family, friends and companies have begun releasing information — painting a clearer picture of who was on the expedition.

Here’s what we know about the crew so far:

• Hamish Harding: The British businessman and adventurer is based in the United Arab Emirates. He owns a company called Action Aviation that buys and sells aircraft including business jets, and which confirmed he was on board the submersible on Sunday. Harding was a passenger on  Blue Origin’s June 2022 space flight , and was one of the first people to travel the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean — the deepest known point on Earth.
• Paul-Henri Nargeolet: Harding posted on social media Saturday that diver Nargeolet was scheduled to be on Sunday’s trip with him. CBC News spoke with Larry Daley, a St. John’s-based diver, who also said Nargeolet was on the expedition. CNN has attempted to reach out independently to Nargeolet with no success. Nargeolet has led several expeditions to the Titanic and supervised the recovery of many artifacts from the wreck, according to the  E/M Group , where Nargeolet was director of underwater research.
• Shahzada and Sulaiman Dawood: The Pakistani businessman and his son were also on board, according to a statement released by the family on Tuesday. Shahzada is a trustee of the SETI Institute, a research organization in California, according to its website. He is also vice chairman of Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group, a conglomerate of various businesses owned by the family.

No seats and one toilet: What it's like inside the submersible

The missing submersible is a small vessel designed to only hold five people for a day — two hours down, several hours exploring the Titanic and two hours back to the surface.

Last year, the founder of tour operator OceanGate Expeditions showed a CBS team the inside of a submersible used to visit the Titanic’s wreckage. The CBS video shows a small chamber, with about as much space as a minivan.

There are no chairs or seats and the passengers sit cross-legged on the floor, having taken off their shoes before entering.

For such an advanced submersible, the interior is mostly bare and simple, with just one button and a screen on the wall. The rest of the vessel’s operations are run on a handheld controller that looks remarkably similar to a gaming console, complete with colorful buttons.

It recommended that passengers restrict their diet before and during the dive “to reduce the likelihood that you will need to use the facilities.”

Watch the video:

What is the submersible that went missing en route to the Titanic shipwreck?

The submersible, named Titan, is operated by OceanGate Expeditions, which handles expeditions to the Titanic wreckage.

According to OceanGate, Titan is a 23,000-pound submersible made of carbon fiber and titanium that’s “designed to take five people to depths of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet).”

Unlike a submarine, a submersible has limited power reserves so it needs a mother ship that can launch and recover it, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

When  CBS correspondent David Pogue  took a trip on the Titan down to the Titanic wreck last year,   on the invitation of OceanGate, he said the hatch was sealed from the outside with 17 bolts — there was no other way out. 

With no GPS underwater, the submersible is only guided by text messages from the surface ship. On Pogue’s trip, communications broke down during a dive and the submersible was lost for over two hours, he said.

Read more here .

Former US Navy submarine captain says "odds don't seem good" for missing crew

It doesn’t bode well that search parties still haven’t heard from the missing submersible, former US Navy submarine captain Thomas Shugart told CNN on Monday.

Shugart said a locator beacon likely would have detected the vessel by now if it had a “relatively minor issue that forced them to surface unexpectedly.”

Shugart added that his experience is limited with the problems the crew may have run into at these depths.

How did the submersible go missing and how much time do they have?

It’s still not clear what happened to the submersible, why it lost contact, and how close to the Titanic it was when it went missing.

The submersible began its two-hour descent to the wreck on Sunday morning, which is about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said. 

Coast Guard officials estimated on Monday afternoon the submersible had “somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours” of oxygen — potentially giving rescuers until Friday to locate and retrieve the vessel. 

But the depth of the area where they went missing could pose a challenge.

The  deepest ever underwater rescue was that of Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson, who were rescued from a submersible at depths of 1,575 feet in 1973. They were trapped for 76 hours before finally being hauled to the surface. 

The Titanic wreckage is much deeper, sitting nearly 13,000 feet below sea level.

Other factors complicating the search include its distance from the coast, local weather conditions, and unknowns like the state of the submersible and whether it has working equipment like acoustic pingers that can be detected by search teams.

Pakistani father and son are on board missing submersible, family say

A Pakistani father and son are on board a submersible carrying five people to see the wreck of the Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, according to a statement released by the family Tuesday. 

The statement named Shahzada Dawood and his son, Sulaiman Dawood, as being on the “journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.”

Shahzada Dawood is a trustee of the SETI Institute in California, according to a biography published on its website. According to the biography, Dawood is vice chairman of Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group.  

Titanic's fate has long been a source of fascination. Here are some key facts about the luxury liner

The submersible that has gone missing in the North Atlantic was part of an expedition to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, perhaps the most famous shipwreck in the world.

More than 100 years after its disastrous maiden voyage, the fate of the luxury liner has long served as a source of fascination , and been the backdrop for countless books, fiction and non-fiction and, of course, a blockbuster movie.

The ship set sail from Southampton, England, to New York on April 10, 1912.

Then, between April 14 to 15, it hit an iceberg around midnight and sank in less than three hours.

A total of 1,517 people died and 706 survived out of 2,223 passengers and crew, according to the  US Senate report  on the disaster.

Here are more interesting facts about the Titanic:

The ship: The estimated cost of construction was $7.5 million. At the time, the RMS Titanic was the largest passenger ship afloat. The ship’s length was 882 feet, 9 inches, and it weighed 46,328 tons. Its top speed was 23 knots. The wreckage is located about 350 miles off the southeast coast of Newfoundland.

How the Titanic sank: The iceberg punctured five of 16 supposedly watertight compartments designed to hold water in case of a breach to the hull. Investigations at the time blamed Capt. Edward Smith for going too fast in dangerous waters, initial ship inspections that had been done too quickly, insufficient room in the lifeboats for all passengers, and a nearby ship’s failure to help. Many maritime safety reforms were implemented as a result of the findings of the investigations.

Smith went down with the ship, and his body was never recovered.

Key dates post-shipwreck:

• September 1, 1985: Scientists from Woods Hole Deep Submergence LAB in Massachusetts, led by Dr. Robert Ballard, and IFREMER, the French Institute Francais de Recherche pour l’Exploitation des Mers, led by Jean Jarry, locate the wreckage of Titanic.
• July 13, 1986: Ballard and his crew use the manned deep-ocean research submersible Alvin to explore the wreckage. The Alvin is accompanied by a remotely operated vehicle named Jason Jr. to conduct photographic surveys and further inspections.
• May 31, 2009: The last known survivor, Millvina Dean, dies at age 97.
• April 8-20, 2012: The 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s voyage. The MS Balmoral traces the ship’s route from Southampton to New York and holds a memorial service, above the wreck, on April 15.
• Summer, 2022: Deep sea investigators Magellan and filmmakers Atlantic Productions use deep sea mapping to create “an exact ‘Digital Twin’ of the Titanic wreck for the first time.”

French explorer PH Nargeolet was scheduled to be on the submersible, social media post says

French diver PH Nargeolet was scheduled to be on the dive with the missing submersible in the North Atlantic, according to a social media post Saturday by businessman and adventurer Hamish Harding.

Harding is one of the passengers on the submersible that went missing during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, according to a social media post by his company, Action Aviation. 

Larry Daley, a St. John’s-based diver who reportedly made the trip to the Titanic two decades ago, told CBC News Nargeolet was one of the people on the current expedition.  

In a news conference Monday, the US Coast Guard Boston did not release the names of any of the five people onboard the missing submersible. It is unclear from the agency if Nargeolet was among those who boarded the vessel the morning after Harding’s social media post.  

CNN has attempted to reach out independently to Nargeolet with no success.  

Deep waters are a big challenge for rescue vessels — even the US Navy's most advanced subs

Depending where and at what depth the submersible is found, there could be limited options for rescue vessels — even the US Navy’s advanced fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

The Navy’s multibillion-dollar nuclear-powered subs can stay under water as long as the provisions for the crew hold out and usually operate at 800 feet or less.

The maximum depth for subs is classified, but reputable experts say the deepest a US Navy sub can go is 1,500 to 2,000 feet, depending upon the class of submarine.

Below those depths, the water pressure on the hull of the submarine would cause it to implode, meaning they can’t dive down to the ocean floor, where the wreckage of the Titanic is located.

The Navy does have specialized rescue submersibles, but even those can only make rescues at depths up to 2,000 feet, according to the Navy’s Underwater Rescue Command.

Deepest rescue: The  deepest ever underwater rescue  was that of Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson, who were rescued from a submersible at depths of 1,575 feet in 1973. They were trapped for 76 hours before finally being hauled to the surface.

During that rescue, authorities used other submersibles and a remotely operated, Navy-developed recovery vessel to attach lines to their vessel, the Pisces III, which were then used to pull it back to the surface.

It’s not clear whether these methods could work for the Titan, given the uncertainty around its location.

Search teams could face choppy seas and foggy weather

The missing submersible was on an eight-day expedition to the Titanic wreck site, departing from St. John’s, Newfoundland on Sunday.

Weather conditions in the area at the time included choppy seas, with 3 to 6 feet waves, and foggy conditions, according to CNN meteorologists.

While these conditions aren’t too out of of the ordinary for the area, they could cause some delays for search parties due to the difficulty of using certain aerial equipment in low clouds. 

On Monday, the US Coast Guard said it was “bringing all assets to bear” in the search for the submersible but the effort was “complicated by local weather conditions.”

A US search plane is most tracked flight, tracking service says

Flight tracking service Flightradar24 said Monday its most tracked flight currently is a US Air Force C-130, which it said was en route to assist the search for the missing submersible.

Later, the US Coast Guard  tweeted that “two C-130 flights have been completed from Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City.”

This post has been updated.

Here's what we know so far about the search for a missing submersible near Titanic wreckage

A search and rescue operation is underway for a missing submersible operated by a company that handles expeditions to the Titanic wreckage off the coast of St John’s, Newfoundland, in Canada.

The vessel has 70 to 96 hours of life support, officials said Monday.

Here’s what we know so far:

• The timeline: The expedition began with a 400-nautical-mile journey to the wreck site, which is about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The submersible began its descent Sunday morning but lost contact with a crew of Polar Prince , the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said. The US Coast Guard launched searches on the surface of the water and an aircraft to start conducting aerial and radar searches after it was alerted that the submersible was overdue , Rear Adm. John Mauger told a news conference Monday.
• What we know about the vessel: The submersible, named “Titan,” weighs 23,000 pounds and is made of carbon fiber and titanium, according to the tour operator, OceanGate Expeditions. The 21-foot vessel has life support for up to 96 hours, according to the OceanGate website . Mauger said officials “anticipate that they’re somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours ” of oxygen available on the vessel at this point. The  Titanic wreckage, discovered in 1985 , sits in two parts at the bottom of the ocean nearly 13,000 feet below the surface.
• Who is on board: Five people are in the missing submersible, according to authorities. Businessman  Hamish Harding is one of the passengers, according to a social media post by his company, Action Aviation. Typically a pilot, a “content expert” and three paying passengers are on the expeditions, according to the OceanGate website. The cost of joining the eight-day expedition is “from $250,000,” according to the operator. Mauger said the Coast Guard is notifying the families of the people on the submersible.
• Search efforts: The effort is incorporating aircraft, sonar buoys and “sonar on the ship that is out there to listen for any sounds that we can detect in the water column,” Mauger said. The Polar Prince is also assisting with the search, a co-owner said. The Canadian Armed Forces and the US Coast Guard have deployed aircraft to the remote area of the North Atlantic. The US Coast Guard said Monday it will continue to conduct surface searches throughout the evening.
• Focus on crew: OceanGate Expeditions said Monday it is taking “every step possible” to return the five crew members to safety. “We are deeply grateful for the urgent and extensive assistance we are receiving from multiple government agencies and deep-sea companies as we seek to reestablish contact with the submersible,” it said.
• What’s next: The Coast Guard said its priority is locating the submersible. If crews do find the vessel in the water, then rescue plans will be formed, Mauger said. At that point, the Coast Guard will reach out to the US Navy, the Canadian Armed Forces and private industry partners to assess what “underwater rescue capability might be available,” Mauger said.

OceanGate says it's taking "every step possible" to bring missing submersible crew back to safety

OceanGate Expeditions says it is taking “every step possible” to return the five crew members onboard  the missing submersible  to safety and focusing its entire search effort on their wellbeing, according to a statement released by the company Monday night.

OceanGate Expeditions is the group that was conducting the expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic

“We are deeply grateful for the urgent and extensive assistance we are receiving from multiple government agencies and deep-sea companies as we seek to reestablish contact with the submersible,” the statement read.

Here’s their full statement:

US Coast Guard says it will search for missing submersible throughout the evening

The US Coast Guard  tweeted  that it will continue to conduct surface searches for the missing submersible throughout the evening.

The Coast Guard tweeted that The Polar Prince, the vessel used to transport the submersible to the site of the Titanic wreckage before the expedition, as well as aerial support from the Air Force’s 106th Rescue Wing, will be involved in the surface searches. 

Canadian Coast Guard surface and subsurface search, as conducted by Canadian P8 Poseidon aircraft, will continue in the morning, according to the US Coast Guard.

96 hours: The submersible has 96 hours of emergency oxygen on board, based on information received from the vessel operator, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger told a news conference Monday. The Coast Guard “anticipate that they’re somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours” of oxygen available on the vessel, he said.

Hamish Harding posted photos of the submersible before it launched on Sunday

Businessman and adventurer Hamish Harding posted photos of the vessel on social media Sunday before the launch of the expedition. 

The photos were posted on Action Aviation’s business Instagram page. They show the submersible sitting in a cradle-like flotation device in the Atlantic Ocean.

A caption accompanying the photos said that it “had a successful launch” and was “currently diving.”  

Another post from the account, posted on Saturday, noted that the weather had been bad but a “window” had opened up for Sunday.

Businessman Hamish Harding is one of the passengers on the submersible, his company says

Businessman and adventurer Hamish Harding is one of the passengers on the submersible that went missing during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic, according to a social media post by his company, Action Aviation. 

OceanGate, the company conducting the expedition, released a statement Monday confirming it lost contact with the submersible but did not specify who was onboard.

Harding, a British national, was one of the first people to travel  the Challenger Deep  in the Pacific Ocean — the deepest known point on Earth.

The United Arab Emirates-based businessman also made headlines in 2019 for being part of a flight crew that broke the world record for the  fastest circumnavigation  of the globe via both poles. More recently, he was a passenger on Blue Origin’s June 2022 space flight .  

Harding  posted  on Facebook on Saturday about his participation in the expedition.

“I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic,” the post read.

CNN has reached out to Action Aviation for comment but did not immediately receive a response. 

The Explorers Club, a New York-based group of elite explorers and scientists that’s been involved in many of the world’s most prestigious discoveries, confirmed Harding was on the submersible.

President Richard Garriott de Cayeux said in a statement he saw Harding last week and “his excitement about this expedition was palpable.”

“I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site,” he said.

Harding is one of the founding members of the club.

A spokesperson for the UK foreign office told CNN it was aware of reports of a British citizen on the submersible.

CNN’s Artemis Moshtaghian contributed reporting to this post.

A search and rescue operation is underway for a submersible touring the wreckage of the Titanic

Officials are in a race against time to find a  civilian submersible  that had five people aboard after it went missing Sunday in the North Atlantic while voyaging to the wreckage of the Titanic.

The 21-foot vessel has four days of emergency capability, the leader of search and rescue efforts said Monday afternoon, as crews with the US and Canadian coast guards continued scouring the ocean’s surface about 900 miles east of Cape Cod and used sonar to listen for sounds far below the water, which is up to 13,000 feet deep in the area.

The five people on board the vessel, which was on an expedition to view the Titanic wreckage, comprised one pilot and four “mission specialists,” Rear Adm. John Mauger,  commander  of the US Coast Guard’s First District, said Monday in a news conference. He didn’t identify the five and said authorities still were in the process of contacting family members.

He referred reporters to the group conducting the expedition, OceanGate Expeditions, for information about what the term “mission specialist” entails.

The Canadian research ship Polar Prince on Sunday notified the military branch it had lost contact with the underwater vessel, according to Coast Guard spokesperson Lt. Samantha Corcoran.  In a tweet , the Coast Guard said the communication stopped approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes into the vessel’s dive.

A British businessman based in the United Arab Emirates, Hamish Harding, is one of the people on the submersible, according to a social media post by the company he owns, Action Aviation.

“The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving,” the company said in  an Instagram post  on Sunday.

Read more here.

Watch CBS News

What were the mysterious banging noises heard during the search for the missing Titanic sub?

By Li Cohen

June 23, 2023 / 1:00 PM EDT / CBS News

Officials on Thursday confirmed the worst about the  fate of the sub that went missing Sunday on a quest to take five people to view the wreckage of the Titanic . It had imploded, they said, likely just hours after it departed. 

But during the course of the search, officials reported that they'd detected mysterious banging noises from below the ocean's surface. That left many people wondering: If the sub was already gone, what was responsible for those sounds? 

Mysterious sounds detected

Officials first said early Wednesday that they had  detected underwater noises in the area of their search for the missing sub, the Titan, saying the sounds had been picked up over the course of Tuesday night and Wednesday. They were described as banging noises heard at roughly 30-minute intervals. 

A Navy official later said the sounds were picked up by Canadian P-8 aircraft that dropped sonobouys — devices that use sonar to detect things underwater — as part of the international search effort.

Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said at the time, "With respect to the noises, specifically, we don't know what they are, to be frank with you." 

Carl Hartsfield, an expert in underwater acoustics and the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, whose team was helping with the search, said Wednesday there could be numerous possible explanations.

"The ocean is a very complex place, obviously — human sounds, nature sounds," he said, "and it's very difficult to discern what the sources of those noises are at times."

But when officials gave their grim update on Thursday, confirming that the sub's debris had been found in pieces on the sea floor after a "catastrophic implosion," a timeline began to emerge that indicated the sounds could not have come from the missing crew. 

Noise from the ocean or other ships

A U.S. Navy official said the Navy detected "an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion" shortly after the sub lost contact with the surface on Sunday, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported. That information was relayed to the Coast Guard, which used it to narrow the radius of the search area, the official said.

U.S. Navy analysis determined that the banging noises heard earlier in the week were most likely either ocean noise or noise from other search ships, another official said.

An undersea implosion of the sub would have destroyed the vessel nearly instantaneously, experts explained, leaving the passengers no opportunity to signal for help.

"In a fraction of a second, it's gone," Will Kohnen, chairman of the professional group the Marine Technology Society Submarine Committee, said in an interview with Reuters.

"It implodes inwards in a matter of a thousandth of a second," he said. "And it's probably a mercy, because that was probably a kinder end than the unbelievably difficult situation of being four days in a cold, dark and confined space. So, this would have happened very quickly. I don't think anybody even had the time to realize what happened." 

Fake audio of Titanic sub goes viral

Numerous videos have gone viral on social media that claim to contain audio of the sounds officials heard during the search. The audio appears to be sonar beeps, followed by what sounds like knocking and then clanging noises. One video on Tiktok has amassed more than 11 million views and prompted many to question the information coming from search officials.

However, the audio is not related to this event. A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard, which was leading the international search effort,  told the Associated Press that they had "not released any audio in relation to the search efforts."

• Submersible

Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.

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Missing Titanic submersible live updates: Texts show OceanGate CEO dismissed concerns

Five people, including the company CEO, were aboard the sub when it imploded.

All passengers are believed to be lost after a desperate dayslong search for a submersible carrying five people that vanished while on a tour of the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

The 21-foot deep-sea vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions , lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after submerging on Sunday morning with a 96-hour oxygen supply. That amount of breathable air was forecast to run out on Thursday morning, according to the United States Coast Guard, which was coordinating the multinational search and rescue efforts.

Latest headlines:

Rcmp to investigate the deaths aboard titan sub, us taxpayer cost for search and rescue may be $1.5 million, expert says, oceangate ceo claimed sub was safer than scuba diving, texts show.

• OceanGate co-founder defends development of submersible
• Sub's carbon-fiber composite hull was the 'critical failure,' James Cameron says
• Probe seeks answers on why Titanic sub imploded
• Navy likely detected sound of the implosion on Sunday: Official
• All lives believed to be lost: OceanGate

Officials with Canada's Transportation Safety Board said at a press conference Saturday that they have begun speaking with people on board the Polar Prince, which launched the ill-fated Titan submersible.

The Polar Prince returned to its port, St. John's, Newfoundland, on Saturday morning.

"I would say that we've received full cooperation," TSB Director of Marine Investigations Clifford Harvey said. "It's been a really good interaction thus far and is really getting full cooperation with all the individuals involved."

In addition, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said they are "examining the circumstances" of the deaths on board Titan, and will launch a full investigation if "the circumstances indicate criminal, federal or provincial laws may possibly have been broken."

-ABC News' Matt J. Foster

A defense budget expert estimates once the U.S. military participation concludes, the cost for the search and rescue mission of the five passengers on board the Titan submersible will cost the U.S. around $1.5 million.

Mark Cancian, a senior advisor with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, came up with the estimate based on aircraft sorties, cross referencing the U.S. Department of Defense cost numbers, Coast Guard Cutter costs and flying hour costs. He said some costs have already been set aside in various budgets, with resources simply diverted to the site.

He emphasized that these are strictly well-informed guesses.

A spokesperson for the Coast Guard's District 1 in Boston would not give an estimate of costs so far, saying, "We cannot attribute a monetary value to Search and Rescue cases, as the Coast Guard does not associate cost with saving a life."

-ABC News' Jaclyn C. Lee

US Coast Guard to lead sub investigation

The U.S. Coast Guard will be the organization leading the investigation into the OceanGate sub incident.

The NTSB announced the news on Friday via Twitter, noting it will "contribute to their efforts."

A Las Vegas father and son told ABC News OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush pressured them for months into taking two seats on the now failed mission to the Titanic, making bold claims about the vessel's safety.

Financier Jay Bloom shared text messages between himself and Rush where Rush dismissed concerns from Bloom and his son Sean about taking the trip on the Titan submersible.

"While there's obviously a risk it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving," Rush texted.

"He sort of had this predisposition that it was safe," Bloom told ABC News. "And anybody who disagreed with him, he felt it was just a differing opinion."

Bloom added that Rush flew out to Las Vegas in a homebuilt plane to convince him to attend the voyage aboard the submersible.

"He flew it all the way to Vegas. And I was like, 'This guy is definitely down to take risk,'" Bloom said.

-ABC News' Sam Sweeney

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All five passengers on missing Titanic submersible dead after catastrophic implosion

Following an urgent race to recover a 22-foot submersible that held five men on board to see the Titanic, search and rescue teams found Thursday morning outer parts of the Titan near the site of the Titanic wreckage. OceanGate, the company that led the mission, said the men on board are dead.

“This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea,” the company wrote.

The debris found on the ocean floor about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic was “consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” in the submersible, said Rear Admiral John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard during a press conference Thursday afternoon. Coast Guard officials said it’s too early to tell when the Titan imploded.

The Coast Guard said families of the five people on board have been notified. For live updates on this disaster, read USA TODAY's live blog here.

What happens next in Titan rescue mission?

US Coast Guard officials said remote operating vehicles, also known as ROVs, would remain operating on the sea floor around the Titanic and investigate the debris field.

“Right now, again our thoughts are with the families and making sure that they have an understanding as best as we can provide of what happened and begin to find some closure,” an unnamed official said during the press conference.

Mauger said he did not know whether the Coast Guard would be able to recover the bodies of the five passengers on board of the Titan. "This is an incredibly unforgiving environment," he said.

Where is the submersible?

On Thursday, search and rescue crews discovered a "debris field" near the Titanic, the Coast Guard said. After an evaluation of the debris, the Coast Guard determined the debris contains pieces of the Titan, including a landing frame and a rear cover from the vessel. The debris was discovered after the sub was expected to have run out of oxygen supply.

"A debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic," the Coast Guard wrote on Twitter.

A Coast Guard official commended the vast search efforts that led to Thursday's findings during the press conference.

"We’ve really had the right gear on site and worked as swiftly as possible to bring all of the capabilities we had to bear to this search and rescue effort," the official said. "It was a huge international multi-agency effort to make this happen.”

What happened to the Titan?

On June 16, the sub and its support ship departed from St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada. Two days later, the submersible began its dive to see the Titanic, which is about 370 miles off Newfoundland and 12,500 feet deep in the North Atlantic Ocean. About one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, the Canadian support ship the Polar Prince, which was tasked with monitoring the submersible, lost all communication with the vessel.

OceanGate said it was equipped with a 96-hour supply of oxygen. That would have lasted until Thursday morning. The Coast Guard led the frantic rescue mission that employed U.S. and Canadian ships, aircraft and other equipment. As of Wednesday, search crews were scouring an area of the ocean roughly two times the size of Connecticut.

Who were the passengers?

The five men who set out to see the Titanic in the submersible included OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, French maritime and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet and a father and son from one of Pakistan’s most prominent families, Shahzada Dawood and Suleman Dawood.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time," OceanGate said in a statement Thursday.

Rush, 61, founded OceanGate in 2009. He was also the co-founder of OceanGate Foundation , a non-profit organization "which aims to catalyze emerging marine technology to further discoveries in marine science, history, and archaeology," according to the company's website. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning last year, Rush said: "What I worry about most are things that will stop me from being able to get to the surface."

Harding, 58, was chairman of Action Aviation, a global sales company in business aviation. He held three Guinness World Records related to his explorations by plane and into the deep ocean. He had also been to space. “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023,' Harding wrote in a  Facebook post announcing he would be aboard The Titan.

Nargeolet, 73, was director of Underwater Research for E/M Group and RMS Titanic, Inc. He successfully dived in a submersible to the site of the Titanic wreckage 37 times and "supervised the recovery of 5,000 artifacts," according to EMGroup's website , which also says he's "widely considered the leading authority on the wreck site."

Shahzada Dawood, 48, was on the board of trustees for the Dawood Foundation, an education nonprofit, according to the  World Economic Forum , the board of the SETI Institute, a non-profit research organization, and he served as vice chairman on the board of Pakistani Engro Corporation. His son, Suleman Dawood, 19, loved science fiction, solving Rubik’s Cubes and playing volleyball, the New York Times reported .

Shahzada Dawood's older sister told NBC News she was "absolutely heartbroken" over the deaths.

"I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to," Azmeh Dawood said. "I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them."

What did the sub look like?

The submersible, owned by the Washington-based private company OceanGate Inc. , was 22 feet long and weighed 25,000 pounds. The vessel was designed to hold five people and descend 13,123 feet into the ocean, according to the company. It had a titanium crew compartment, a carbon fiber hull and one toilet on the inside.

The cost for a trip was $250,000, according to OceanGate. The company runs commercial projects, scientific research and exploration in deep water. After the submersible's disappearance, information surfaced showing there were prior concerns about the safety of the group's expeditions.

Contributing: Jeanine Santucci, Isabelle Butera , Javier Zarracina, Janet Loehrke and Grace Hauck

Contact Kayla Jimenez at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @kaylajjimenez.