“While the US Coast Guard has assumed the role of search and rescue mission coordinator, we do not have all of the necessary expertise and equipment required in a search of this nature,” he said.
“This is a complex search effort, which requires multiple agencies with subject matter expertise and specialised equipment.”
Frederick explained that rescuers were using multiple methods as they comb the vast area for the Titan, which lost contact with its mothership just two hours into its dive near the Titanic’s watery grave.
“The search efforts have focused on both surface with C-130 aircraft searching by sight and with radar, and subsurface with P3 aircraft, we’re able to drop and monitor sonar buoys.”
SEAFLOOR, WATER COLUMN OR SURFACE
So far, the searches have proved fruitless.
The effort was being augmented on Tuesday by a huge pipe-laying vessel, which has a remotely operated vehicle expected to be deployed at the Titan’s last known position.
Jules Jaffe, who was part of the team that developed the optical imaging system used to find the Titanic in 1985, said rescuers would have to look in three separate places.
“It’s either sitting on the seafloor, somewhere in the water column, or sitting on the surface,” he told ABC10 in San Diego.
“It could be in the water column. I think that’s probably the most likely place it is.”
Jamie Pringle, a professor of forensic geosciences at Keele University in Britain, said if the mini-sub had settled on the ocean floor, it could be very difficult to spot.
“The bottom of the ocean is not flat; there are lots of hills and canyons,” Pringle said, according to NBC.
Adding to the challenge: The enormous pressure 4km under water, around 400 times what it is on the surface.
Such pressures put enormous strains on equipment, and very few vessels can survive these depths.
Nuclear submarines generally operate at just 300m, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Source: CNA
