The first deepwater recovery robot, Victor 6000, has made it to the ocean floor to begin searching for the missing Titanic sub. (Read More Here).
While it’s feared the onboard oxygen supply may have been depleted, the US Coast Guard still considers this an “active search & rescue”—NOT a recovery mission.
Victor 6000 has arms that can cut cables, dislodge a trapped or stranded vessel, as well as fix a cable onto the sub to allow it to be winched up to the surface.
More search & rescue assets will be arriving on scene today. As the reported oxygen reserves onboard the Titan are expected to run out, a French French oceanographic vessel L’Atalante arrived over the wreck site on Thursday bearing what many believe is the 5-man crew’s only hope of being rescued – an underwater robot called Victor 6000.
L’Atalante, a research vessel operated by the French Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer), “is currently using its multibeam echosounder to obtain a finer map of the landscape and enable Victor 6000 to dive more efficiently”.
The Polar Prince, the research vessel that the Titan was launched from, remained near the Titanic wreck site in the Atlantic Ocean. It is operated by OceanGate – the sub’s owner – and was reportedly being used as the “unified command” by the US Coast Guard.
It was quickly joined by Deep Energy, a vessel that is used to lay pipes at great depths along the ocean floor, and another commercial vessel, Skandi Vinland.
By Wednesday morning, Canadian coast guard vessels John Cabot – equipped with sonar capabilities – and Atlantic Merlin had also joined the search.
How can Victor 6000 help?
The Titan, which is owned by OceanGate Expedition, has been missing since it dived on Sunday to the wreck at a depth of 3,810 metres (around 12,500 feet).
On board the 6.7-metre-long craft are OceanGate’s CEO and founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Since it lost contact, it has a theoretical autonomy of 96 hours. The final five vessels were expected to arrive on Thursday. French research vessel L’Atalante was expected to be the first to join the search.
Two further Canadian Coast Guard ships – the Anne Harvey and the Terry Fox – were also expected as well as another commercial vessel, the Horizon Arctic.
Finally, Canadian naval ship Glace Bay was en route to provide medical assistance. It is equipped with a medical team and a mobile hyperbaric recompression chamber. Hyperbaric chambers are used to treat people affected by a sudden and rapid change in pressure.
