Rescuing alive the five people who were traveling aboard the submersible OceanGate with the intention of seeing the remains of the Titanic up close seems like an impossible mission. There is no communication with the small ship, the research area is large and is located at a depth of about 3,800 meters. However, there is hope. This is what Pere Forès says, founder and director of the Catalan civil submarine company Ictineu Submarins and chief pilot of the Ictineu 3, capable of reaching depths of up to 1,200 meters.
“If we go by the statistics, the chances of survival are not remote,” says the engineer, who is currently writing a book on the history of civilian submarines in the world. The last fatal accident involving one of these devices, he says, was in 1980. “In the last seventy years, there hasn’t been a submarine crash,” he says.
There are success stories. In 2005, a Russian civilian submarine managed to emerge to the surface after being caught by nets in the depths of the ocean and spending 76 hours incommunicado. Its seven crew members saved their lives. In 1973 the two crew members of the Pisces III were rescued safe and sound after a 76-hour mission at sea.
Forès explains that “normally a submarine of these characteristics can surface even if it does not have electricity”. There are several options. They could do it in an autonomous way by throwing blocks of lead to make the ship rise or by injecting air into some tanks (although this possibility would not work for the OceanGate, due to the depth at which it is located). “There is always a rescue plan”, assures Forès. The support vessel has a windlass with a steel cable that could be attached to the submersible to raise it, and this could also be done by a robot.
But the first thing is to locate or recover contact with the OceanGate, something that has not been achieved so far. With so few clues, for now we can only hypothesize about what happened. “The submarine may have had an electrical failure or is out of range from where it could be heard. Underwater communications are complicated”, says Forès. Another possibility would be that the submarine had landed on the Titanic and that it had suffered some breakdown or breakage in its antenna, which would make communication with the outside impossible.
In case it was a communication problem and not a machine operation problem, Forès explains that the order is to go up to the surface after 30 minutes of incommunicado with the outside. “It is possible that they have managed to get to the surface, but that the current has dragged them and they are at some distance” from where the research is being carried out, he speculates.
Another possibility would be that they had been trapped in an area that made communication impossible, such as “a Titanic wall, which are very high”, says the expert. Or that a net prevented his movements. In this case, it would be necessary for another submarine to rescue him. “There is oxygen for 96 hours of stress”, recalls Forès, hopeful.
