5 vessels searching for missing Titan submersible in Atlantic

Titan, the missing submersible, has not had any contact with any of the surface ships since Sunday (June 18, 2023) and now time is running out for those on board. A massive search operation is being conducted to locate and rescue Titan and the five people in it. Authorities, since Tuesday, have been racing against time to get resources in place to find and retrieve Titan.

The submersible had 96 hours of oxygen when it went deep into the Atlantic ocean on June 18 for a tour of the Titanic wreck. But four days later, time is running out as there is still no trace of Titan.

Vessels searching for Titan

Five vessels have been deployed in the search effort as per the US and Canadian coast guards. Their details are as follows:

• CCGS John Cabot: The 207-foot Canadian Coast Guard offshore fishery science vessel carries “advanced deep sonar,” the Canadian Coast Guard stated. Its sonar uses sound wave echoes to find objects or to map features in the ocean.
• 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.
• 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 June 22.
• 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.
• HMCS Glace Bay: A Canadian Navy 181-foot coastal defence 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.

While an  international effort is underway to locate Titan, some of the rescue assets have not yet reached the search site. According to the Ocean explorer Tom Dettweiler, the movement of all the heavy equipment needed would require a "tremendous effort" and "it has been done as fast as it could be." 

Dettweiler is an ocean operations and engineering consultant and led an expedition that discovered the Titanic wreckage in 1985. "It is all very large, very heavy, it had to be flown up in cargo airplanes. Then it has to be carried to the ship. This massive machinery has to be lifted on board, secured to the deck so it doesn't shift when the ship is rolling at sea," he asserted.

He also compared the situation of Titan with Titanic saying, "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."