The Coast Guard says a unified command team is working "tirelessly" to find the missing submersible Titan in a search of a vast area of the North Atlantic. At a briefing Wednesday afternoon, Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick said Canadian planes detected underwater noises on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, offering hope that the five people in the submersible could still be alive, the New York Times reports. "This is a search and rescue mission, 100%,” Frederick said. “When you’re in the middle of a search and rescue case, you always have hope." He said the search is focusing on the area where the noises were heard and experts are analyzing tapes to determine the cause of the sounds.
A plane reportedly detected "banging sounds" every 30 minutes during the search Tuesday. Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said Wednesday that acoustic analysts "have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential man-made sources." Frederick said that remotely operated vehicles were relocated to search for the sound of the noises and "although the ROV searches have yielded negative results, they continue." The Coast Guard currently has five vessels searching for the Titan in an area twice the size of Connecticut and they expect there will be 10 within 24 hours, the BBC reports.
Experts believe there is less than a day's worth of air left in the submersible, which disappeared during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday morning. Asked whether there is food and water on board, Frederick said, "They do have limited rations aboard but I can't tell you exactly how much ." Asked if he was optimistic, he said, "We have to remain optimistic and hopeful when we are in a search and rescue case." At the end of the press conference, he said his team is "not in the business of speculation. We are in the business of searching." More on why the search is uniquely challenging here. (More Titanic stories.)
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