Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1501912
11 WORLD 22.6.2023 Only rescue ship capable of winching sub to safety joins desperate hunt for Titan RESCUE teams are frantically search- ing for OceanGate's missing Titan sub- mersible, which is holding five men who were on their way to view the Ti- tanic ship wreck. At the time of writing, it is estimated those on board have less than 24 hours of oxygen left after contact was lost with the sub on Sunday. e submersible is believed to be around 12,500ft below the surface, which makes it incredibly difficult for rescue teams to reach. On Tuesday night, an array of vital equipment arrived in Canada as rescue teams prepared to embark on a 15- hour scramble across the Atlantic. at included a number of obscure electric items with 'high voltage' writ- ten on the side. One vehicle capable of going 20,000ft underwater also landed at St John's air- port, Newfoundland, via three US car- go planes. In total, five people are trapped in the OceanGate submersible, which offers users the chance to visit the Titanic shipwreck for £195,000. ose trapped onboard include UK billionaire Hamish Harding, two Pa- kistanis - Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman - Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, as well as 73-year-old French explorer Paul-Hen- ry Nargeolet. If the rescue team is to find the sub- marine, there is no way of transferring them to an alternate vehicle. at is because the doors are bolted shut from the outside, meaning they would need to be reeled back up to the surface. e oceanographic institute in France is sending an elite ship alongside the underwater robot Victor 6000, which could theoretically reach the submers- ible. But rescue teams are in a race against time, with estimates suggesting those on the sub have less than 24 hours of oxygen left. e "incredibly complex" rescue mis- sion could take all day - or even longer - casting doubts on whether or not they can be found in time. One way rescuers can pull off a res- cue mission is by using a 'Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System'. at allows a system with a winch that can hook large objects weighing up to 60,000 pounds. e Titan weighs roughly around 23,000 pounds. Ex-navy commander, Chris Parry, said the odds of retrieving the vessel are "vanishingly small". "Obviously, we want to remain hope- ful and optimistic but there are two problems here - one is actually finding the thing and secondly is how on earth are we going to get it off the seabed," Dr Parry said. "It's never been done before and I don't think anybody's got any ideas about how to do it at the moment." He added: "You've got this vastly complex seabed with all the debris of the Titanic, you've got hills and can- yons and everything, and I'm afraid to say without an emitting signal from the vehicle itself it's almost, well, I'd say it's impossible to find in the timescale." Meanwhile, the head of the search ef- fort for the missing submarine has said that the operation to trace the craft will continue "as long as there's an oppor- tunity for survival". Rear Admiral John Mauger from the US Coast Guard, who is leading the search. told US news outlets today: "As long as there's opportunity for surviv- al we will continue to work with this broad unified command to bring every resource to bear on the search. "Over the course of the next 24 hours we are going to being additional ves- sels, additional remotely operated ve- hicles and we are going to continue to fly in the area. "We'll continue to look," he said. "Our thoughts are with the crew members and the families." The Titan submersible crew Underwater noises were picked up by a Canadian plane using sonobuoys in the search for the Titan - but further inspections of the sounds have so far "yielded negative results"