A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard in Boston told The Washington Post that a search-and-rescue mission is underway.
The company statement did not clarify how many people were on board, but said its “entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families.” Its website says its submersibles can hold five people.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday afternoon on Twitter that a C-130 aircraft is searching for an “overdue” research submarine roughly 900 miles off Cape Cod.
It added that the Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax is assisting the search with a P8 Poseidon aircraft with underwater detection capabilities.
The ship-tracking service Marine Traffic said via Twitter on Monday that it could see three vessels headed to the site of the Titanic
OceanGate Expeditions began taking crews of “citizen scientists” or “crew members” in the submersible to view the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 2021. Its website says OceanGate conducts eight-day expeditions to the wreck, with one currently underway and the next one planned for June 2024.
“OceanGate Expeditions makes you a full member of the crew and the experience allows you to participate in every aspect of the expedition,” says a review on the company’s website attributed to two-time customer Renata R.
The Titanic, the largest ship of its time, was touted as unsinkable before its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York in April 1912 with more than 2,200 passengers and crew on board. After striking an iceberg, it sank into the North Atlantic Ocean, killing more than 1,500 people, according to most estimates. Its wreckage now lies on the ocean floor under 12,500 feet of water, roughly 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.
Last year, Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, told CBS that the expedition costs $250,000 per person. Rush said some of the Titanic enthusiasts — or “Titaniacs” — who travel on the submersible mortgage their homes to go on the trip or save for 30 years, while others are so rich they don’t think twice about the cost.
David Pogue, a CBS reporter who went on the Titanic expedition, said via Twitter that the submersible he traveled on also went missing for a few hours last year.
Neither Rush nor OceanGate could be immediately reached Monday to discuss the missing.
A submersible is different from a submarine because the former is supported by a surface vessel, platform, shore team or sometimes a larger submarine.
The Titanic has already been in the news several times this year. In May, an underwater 3D scanning project led by British deep-sea mapping company Magellan revealed a “digital twin” of the vessel with stunning features of the wreckage.
Earlier this year, largely unseen footage of the ship from 1986 was revealed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, an ocean research nonprofit. The video, which shows the wreckage of the Titanic months after it was discovered, commemorated the 25th anniversary of of the movie “Titanic,” whose writer and director James Cameron continues to support Titanic research.
