Titanic tourist submersible: Search relocated after noises heard

Rescuers searching for a tourist submersible near the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic have heard “noises” in the area near where it went missing on Sunday, the US Coast Guard says.

It says a Canadian P-3 plane – using sonar buoys – heard the sounds, which US Navy experts are now analysing.

Underwater operations have been relocated to explore the source.

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But so far the remote operated vehicles [ROV] have “yielded negative results”, the Coast Guard said.

“Additionally, the data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our US Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans,” the Coast Guard tweeted in the early hours of Wednesday, as the ROV searches continue.

According to an internal US government memo seen by US media outlets, “banging” was heard at 30-minute intervals on Tuesday.

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Additional sonar was used four hours later and noises could still be heard.

The BBC has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Five people were on the vessel when contact was lost an hour and 45 minutes into its dive, or more than halfway down towards the wreck, on Sunday.

Search authorities estimate that the sub has fewer than 30 hours of oxygen left – meaning supplies are set to run out by about 10:00 GMT (06:00 EDT) on Thursday.

The five men on board include British businessman Hamish Harding, 58, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 18, French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, and Stockton Rush, 61, the chief executive of OceanGate.

The group were sealed inside the sub using external bolts, meaning they cannot escape from it by themselves even if it resurfaces.

Chris Brown, an explorer and friend of Mr Harding, said the reported banging sounds has “got them written all over it” and “just the sort of thing I would have expected Hamish to come up with”.

“If you made a continuous noise, that’s not going to get picked up, but doing it every 30 minutes, that suggests humans,” he told BBC Breakfast.

“I’m sure they’re all conserving oxygen and energy, because it’s cold and dark down there.”

The search operation in the Canadian province of Newfoundland has so far failed to turn up anything. However, it is expanding to include more resources and rescue expertise from private firms.

The mission is complex – there has been no communication from tourist company OceanGate’s Titan sub and visibility is quickly lost below the surface of the water as light cannot penetrate far.

There have also been poor weather conditions in the area, although the US Coast Guard said these had improved on Tuesday.

An area of 7,600 sq miles (1,970 sq km) has been covered so far, which is larger than the US state of Connecticut.

“Our crews are working around the clock to ensure that we are doing everything possible to locate the Titan and the five crew members,” said Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick earlier.

US and Canadian agencies, navies and commercial deep-sea firms are all helping the rescue operation, which is being run from the US city of Boston in Massachusetts. This has involved the use of military planes, a submarine, and also sonar buoys that are dropped from aircraft or ships on the ocean surface for underwater acoustic research.

Capt Frederick said there was a huge effort under way to get heavy equipment to the search site.

Two Canadian Coast Guard ships and a Royal Canadian Navy ship equipped with a six-person mobile hyperbaric recompression chamber are also en route.

If the sub is located, this chamber can be used to treat or prevent decompression sickness, which occurs when divers are exposed to rapid decreases in pressure.

Several private vessels have also been assisting in the search, while France has diverted a vessel with a subsea robot and an ROV with a camera on board has been exploring the last known location of the sub.

The commercial pipe-laying ship Deep Energy has been helping the research ship Polar Prince, which was the support ship on Sunday’s tourist expedition, to search the ocean’s surface.

The Titanic, which was the largest ship of its time, hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 died.

Its wreckage has been extensively explored since it was discovered in 1985.

OceanGate Expeditions charges guests $250,000 (£195,270) for a place on its eight-day expedition to see the famous wreck, which sits 12,500ft (3,800m) beneath the surface at the bottom of the Atlantic.