Latest updates:
- Still no results from ROV searches after subsea noises observed.
- Five assets searching the surface, expecting 10 in the next 24 hours.
- French ROV experts en route from St. John's.
More than 12 hours after noises were heard underwater, there is still no other sign of the Titan submersible.
The United States coast guard gave an update on Wednesday afternoon, providing little new information on the search for the vessel and its five missing crew members.
Capt. Jamie Frederick said remotely operated vehicles have been dispatched to the area where a Canadian plane had observed noises through a dropped buoy. He said those searches have yielded "negative results," and the noises are considered "inconclusive."
"We need to have hope, but I can't tell you what the noises are," Frederick said. "What I can tell you is we're searching where the noises are."
The Canadian flights have picked up numerous noises, which have been described as "banging noises," said Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They were observed on Tuesday and Wednesday.
"The ocean is a very complex place," he said. "Obviously [there are] human sounds, nature sounds, and it's very difficult to discern what the source of those noises are at times."
He said the people observing and interpreting the sounds and subsequent data are among the most highly trained in the world.
The submersible's oxygen supply is expected to expire as early as Thursday morning.
Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue. 1/2
—@USCGNortheast
OceanGate Expeditions — the company behind the missing submersible — declined an interview request Wednesday morning.
The company has been leading the efforts under the water, where it has conducted numerous successful missions in the past. That's happening as the company's CEO, Stockton Rush, is one of the five people missing in the ocean.
Frederick said there is a team of French ROV operators en route to the scene from St. John's, and the number of assets searching the surface is expected to double from five to 10 in the next 24 hours.
Questions are swirling about the safety of OceanGate Expeditions, after multiple media outlets reported a 2018 letter from industry leaders that called for the company to have its submersibles certified by an independent body.
Sean Leet — co-founder and chairman of Horizon Maritime, whose vessel Polar Prince is contracted to tow the Titan out to sea — said that wasn't a concern for his company.
"OceanGate runs an extremely safe operation," he said. "Our full focus right now is getting that submersible located and getting those people back safely."
Leet said the Polar Prince had regular contact with the Titan until communications were severed an hour and 45 minutes into the dive on Sunday. He couldn't say if there was any sign of distress before that point, or why nobody called the coast guard until after the Titan was overdue.
"All protocols were followed for the mission," he said.
American arrival draws crowd in St. John's
Three more Canadian vessels arrived at the wreckage site on Wednesday morning — the Skandi Vinland and Atlantic Merlin, which are offshore supply vessels, and the Canadian Coast Guard's John Cabot. The latter ship has "side-scanning capabilities and is conducting search patterns" alongside the others, according to the U.S. coast guard.
The ships are carrying highly specialized equipment and personnel to the scene, which is 685 km southeast of Newfoundland.
Locals lined up at the fence outside St. John's International Airport Tuesday evening to watch as a trio of American C17 aircraft landed and began offloading. They were met by a long line of local transport trucks.
Later in the night, a handful of spectators watched as crews unloaded crates from the trucks onto a pair of waiting Canadian Coast Guard ships, and the offshore supply vessel Horizon Arctic.
"It's kind of eerie," said onlooker Jonathan Hancock. "To be here in the fog and the rain and the cold and be thinking about the people out there and if they're still alive. It's pretty sobering for sure."
Harold Janes was also watching — with a personal interest.
"I have a daughter operating the crane," he said. "She was called down to go to work to put the equipment on the boat to try and rescue the people in the submarine."
Janes said his daughter also put the Titan in the water last weekend, before it embarked on the expedition that's become global news.
One of the pieces of equipment expected to have arrived in St. John's on Tuesday is a flyaway deep ocean salvage system, belonging to the U.S. navy. A spokesperson from the navy described it as a "motion-compensated lift system designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels."
Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
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