Rescuers are hoping the five people missing on the Titanic tourist submarine should still be alive by extending their oxygen beyond the 96-hour air supply window that ended Thursday morning.
OceanGate Expeditions, the private company that owns the Titan submarine, estimated the ship had 4 days of life support after it disappeared Sunday. Nevertheless, the US Coast Guard said the indicator is just not a direct indicator of the fate of the missing passengers.
Frank Owen, a submarine search and rescue expert, told The Post that there continues to be hope that passengers will survive beyond the 96-hour window in the event that they reduce their metabolic levels and body activity by “slow respiratory and sleeping.”
Conversely, other experts warned that passengers stuck in a cramped 22-foot submarine could actually cut off their oxygen supply by panicking.
Dr. Ken Ledez, specialist in hyperbaric medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland, said BCC Thursday that prolonged low oxygen levels would cause irreparable damage to the “nervous system or heart”.
![Dr. Ken Ledez has warned that prolonged periods without oxygen can lead to permanent brain damage.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013049452.jpg?w=1024)
![The five people missing on the Titan submarine are (clockwise) Hamish Harding, Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood, Sulaiman Dawood, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012999877-5.jpg?w=1024)
With a diminishing air supply, people may experience anxiety, headaches, confusion, shortness of breath, blue fingertips, increased heart rate, and eventually loss of consciousness.
Based on the Cleveland Clinic, inside five minutes of low oxygen, cell death occurs, which may result in brain damage, coma, or death. After 10 minutes without oxygen, complete brain death occurs.
Despite the grim estimates, Ledez repeated the Coast Guard’s call to the families of the passengers—Sulaiman Dawood, 19; his father, business tycoon Shahzada, 48; British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58; the famous discoverer of the Titanic Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77 years old; and OceanGate founder and CEO, 61-year-old Stockton Rush – to maintain hope alive.
A tourist exploring the wreck of the Titanic disappears into the Atlantic Ocean
what we all know
A submarine on an expensive tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean disappeared with possibly only 4 days of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small sub began its underwater journey with five passengers on Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel it was working with lost contact with its crew after about an hour and 45 minutes of diving.
Who’s on board?
World explorer Hamish Harding’s family has confirmed on Facebook that he was one of five passengers on the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who paid for a spaceflight aboard a Blue Origin rocket last yr, shared a photograph of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s recent journey to the shipwreck.
Also on board were Pakistani energy and technology mogul Shanzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, 19; the famous French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and the founder and CEO of OceanGate Stockton Rush.
![](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/submersible.chart_.jpg?w=1024)
What’s next?
“We’re doing every little thing in our power to locate the submarine and rescue those on board,” Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of hours, we understood that the operator had 96 hours of contingency capability.
Coast Guard officials said they are actually focusing all their efforts on locating the submarine before sending any vessel capable of descending even below 12,500 feet where the wreck of the Titanic is positioned.
While the Coast Guard doesn’t have a submarine capable of reaching such depths, officials are working around the clock to make sure that such a vessel is prepared if and when the Titan submarine is positioned.
Mauger, the first district commander and commander of the search and rescue mission, said the United States was coordinating the operation with Canada.
Debris recovered from the Titan submarine search site by the United States Coast Guard on Thursday contained “a landing frame and a rear cowl from the submarine.”
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“I do not think so [rescuers] should hand over, he said.
It’s value noting that the Guinness World Record for the longest voluntarily held breath under water was as much as 24 minutes and 37 seconds. It belongs to Croatian Budimir Šobat, who performed a tremendous feat in 2021 to boost awareness about the earthquake that hit the city of Sisak.
![Search and rescue teams are working around the clock trying to locate the missing submarine.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012947964-1.jpg?w=1024)
![Humans can usually only go 10 minutes without oxygen to the brain.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000013049276.jpg?w=1024)
Under the influence of cerebral hypoxia, the medical term for lack of oxygen in the brain, people under 25 have a greater likelihood of recovery.
This might mean 19-year-old Sulaiman Dawood, the youngest person aboard the Titan, would stand the best likelihood if the submarine was recovered quickly.
With the lack of oxygen, Mike Tipton, head of the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the UK’s University of Portsmouth, said Insider that passengers aboard the Titan it could also face carbon dioxide poisoning inside the submarine if its filtration system were damaged or it ran out of power.
Ledez repeated the warning, adding that passengers risk hypothermia floating in the cold Atlantic Ocean if something happens to the submarine’s heating system.
“[After a while] you will not have any movement or muscle strength,” Ledez said. “Your reasoning will weaken and you may pass out the colder it gets.”