A desperate search for a missing submersible near the wreck of the Titanic reached a critical stage Thursday, with experts concerned that the five people on board may have run out of oxygen.
Rescue organizers rushed more ships and vessels to the disappearance site, hoping to locate the tiny vessel after detecting underwater sounds for a second straight day.
Two more unmanned subs were deployed Thursday as the massive hunt for the Titan, lost somewhere in a vast swathe of the North Atlantic between the ocean's surface and more than two miles below, moved to the critical stage.
The co-founder of OceanGate, the company that operates the missing sub, broke his silence to say he believes the five crew members on board Titan have “longer than what most people think”.
US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said rescuers were "fully committed."
A surge of assets and experts have joined the operation in the past day, and sonar has picked up unidentified underwater noises.
Organizers of the multinational response- including US and Canadian military planes, coast guard ships and teleguided robots- are focusing their efforts in the North Atlantic close to the underwater noises detected by sonar.
The French research ship Atalante deployed an unmanned robot able to search at depths of up to 6,000 meters below water yesterday, the Coast Guard tweeted. Experts have called the Victor 6000 "the main hope" for underwater rescue.
The Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic has also deployed a robot that has already reached the ocean floor and begun its search, the Coast Guard also said in a tweet.
The sounds raised hopes that the passengers on the small tourist craft were still alive, though experts have not been able to confirm their source.
The submersible, Titan, began its descent on Sunday and was due to resurface seven hours later, according to the US Coast Guard.
The 21-foot tourist craft lost communication with its mothership less than two hours into its trip to see the Titanic, which sits more than two miles below the surface of the North Atlantic.
Titan was carrying British billionaire Hamish Harding and Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who also have British citizenship. OceanGate Expeditions charges $250,000 for a seat on the sub.
