Rescuers were on Wednesday still trying to find a mini submarine that vanished without a trace while on its way to visit the wreck of the Titanic.
According to AFP, teams from around the world were racing against the clock to locate the “orca-sized” vessel and the five persons aboard before their oxygen ran out.
By Thursday, their air supply would have run out.
However, scouring a 20 000-square-kilometre area of the North Atlantic outside Newfoundland to a depth of almost four kilometres is not easy.
“It’s pitch black down there. It's freezing cold,” Titanic expert Tim Maltin told NBC News Now.
“The seabed is mud, and it’s undulating.
“You can’t see your hand in front of your face. It’s really a bit like being an astronaut going into space.”
The 6.5-metre submersible, named Titan, was carrying three fee-paying passengers when it vanished on Sunday; they are British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and Dawood’s son Suleman.
OceanGate Expeditions, which runs the Titan’s trips, charges $250 000 (R4.5 million) for a seat.
The company’s CEO Stockton Rush and French submarine operator Paul-Henri Nargeolet, nicknamed “Mr Titanic” for his frequent dives at the site, are also aboard.
The Titan lost contact with its mothership just two hours into its dive.
Jules Jaffe, who was part of the team that found the Titanic in 1985, said there were two likely explanations for the sub’s disappearance.
“It’s either a mechanical failure, or an electrical failure,” he told AFP in La Jolla, California.
“The worst place for them to be would be on the sea floor, which would imply that the vehicle itself either imploded or got tangled somehow.”
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