Here’s the latest on the missing submersible.

An international team of rescuers was racing against time on Tuesday to search an area
of the North Atlantic larger than Connecticut for a deep-diving submersible and its five
occupants, with less than two days of oxygen believed to be remaining on board and a
staggering list of logistical challenges complicating the operation.

The submersible, the Titan, was more than halfway into what should have been a two-
and-a-half-hour dive to the ruins of the Titanic when it lost contact with a chartered
research ship on Sunday morning. Leaders in the submersible craft industry had warned
for years of possible “catastrophic” problems with the craft’s design, and worried that
the Titan had not followed standard certification procedures.

Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, which has provided tours of the Titanic wreck
since 2021, the submersible was believed to have set out with 96 hours’ worth of oxygen.
As of 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday, the craft probably had about 40 hours of breathable
air left, said Capt. Jamie Frederick of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Search aircraft from the United States and Canada have been scanning the surface,
while sonar buoys have been pinging the depths in hopes of locating the lost
submersible, Captain Frederick said.

Even if the Titan can be located — in a remote patch of ocean where the seafloor lies
more than two miles below the choppy surface — retrieving it may not be easy. To
recover objects off the seafloor, the U.S. Navy uses a remote-operated vehicle that can
reach depths of 20,000 feet. But ships that carry such a vehicle normally move no faster
than about 20 miles per hour, and the Titanic wreck lies about 370 miles off the coast of
Newfoundland, Canada.

Here’s what to know:

• Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, was piloting the
submersible, according to the company. The other four occupants are Hamish
Harding, a British businessman and explorer; the British-Pakistani
businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; and Paul-Henri
Nargeolet, a French maritime expert who has been on over 35 dives to the Titanic
wreck site.
• Spots in the tours go for a price of up to $250,000 as part of a booming high-risk
travel industry. OceanGate has described the trip on its website as a “thrilling and
unique travel experience.”
• In 2018, more than three dozen people, including oceanographers, submersible
company executives and deep-sea explorers, warned that they had “unanimous
concern” about the craft’s design, and worried that the Titan had not followed
standard certification procedures. In a 2019 blog post, the company said that
“bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into
real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.”