The US Coast Guard believes there is only around 40 hours of oxygen remaining on board the submersible that has gone missing near the wreck of the Titanic, giving rescuers less than two days to find and recover it.
“We know at this point we’re at approximately 40 to 41 hours [of oxygen] left,” said Captain Jamie Frederick, the US Coast Guard response co-ordinator.
There are believed to be five people on board, including British billionaire Hamish Harding and a prominent Pakistani businessman and his son.
A French vessel equipped with a deep-sea underwater robot is heading to the North Atlantic to help find the vessel which has been missing since Monday and only has a limited supply of oxygen left.
The location of the search on Monday was approximately 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in water as deep as 13,000 feet.
What other dangers await the passengers?
Even if rescuers are able to locate the submersible before its oxygen supply runs out, the passengers face other dangers.
One possibility is that they are stranded at the bottom of the ocean near the site of the Titanic, about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
If that is the case, those on board will be faced with a rapidly dropping temperature which puts them at risk of hypothermia.
David Gallo, a senior adviser for Strategic Initiatives for RMS Titanic, told CNN that temperatures on the ocean floor are “just above freezing cold”.
He said: “It is a race against time - you are fighting oxygen levels, also fighting the cold if the sub is still at the bottom, because the deep ocean is just above freezing, so hypothermia is an issue.
“The water is very deep - two miles plus. It’s like a visit to another planet, it’s not what
people think it is. It is a sunless, cold environment and high pressure.”
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