The missing submersible in the Atlantic Ocean has about 40 hours of oxygen remaining for tourists on board, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a briefing on Tuesday.
Capt. Jamie Frederick said crews were “doing everything possible” to find the craft and the five people on it.
The mission is a “complex search” but those efforts “have not yielded any results,” he added.
Chief Petty Officer Robert Simpson, a Coast Guard spokesman, said rescue crews were being assisted by good weather and that the search was being conducted above and below water.
“If it’s on the surface, we’re fairly sure we’re going to be able to find it,” Simpson said.
Information about the five occupants of the vessel started to come to light on Monday.
The submersible, dubbed the Titan, is owned by OceanGate Expeditions. It was carrying a pilot and four passengers on a mission to document the wreckage of the Titanic, the iconic ship that sank more than 100 years ago. This was the Titan’s third annual mission to the wreckage site, about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Titan lost contact with its mother ship, Polar Prince, less than two hours after being deployed in the water early Sunday morning.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, OceanGate Expeditions charges guests up to $250,000 for a seat on the exploration mission. While the company has not publicly identified the pilot or passengers aboard the Titan, several have been identified by friends, family, or business associates.
Hamish Harding, a British billionaire adventurer, is reportedly onboard the Titan, according to a spokesperson for Action Aviation. Harding is the company’s chairman of the board.
Harding and fellow adventurer Victor Vescovo explored the lowest depths of the Mariana Trench in 2021. In 2022, Harding traveled to outer space aboard Blue Origen’s New Shepard rocket.
In an Instagram post, Harding announced that he had joined the OceanGate mission along with legendary explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
“I am proud to finally announce that I joined @oceangateexped for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic,” the post read.
“The team on the sub has a couple of legendary explorers, some of which have done over 30 dives to the RMS Titanic since the 1980s including PH Nargeolet.”
Nargeolet is a French explorer and a Titanic expert. His friend and colleague David Gallo confirmed to CNN that Nargeolet is aboard the Titan.
Prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, are also passengers on the Titan, according to a family statement.
The Dawood family owns investments in agriculture, healthcare, and other industries across Pakistan, according to the Associated Press. Shahzada Dawood serves on the board of the SETI Institute in California, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.
U.S. and Canadian government agencies are assisting with the search for the missing submersible. As of Tuesday, the U.S. Coast Guard reported that an area totaling 10,000 square miles had been searched.
When the Titan was deployed Sunday morning, it was equipped with a 96-hour oxygen supply, according to David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate Expeditions.
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