A sonar expert claims the “thumps” heard by search and rescue boats at the search site for the missing Titanic tourist submarine are likely “debris” and “garbage” from the iconic wreck.
Jeff Karson, professor emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Syracuse University, told DailyMail.com that the sounds heard are likely “illusions” by the Coast Guard.
The US Navy detected the noises Wednesday morning after a Canadian P3 search plane picked up sounds coming from the water Tuesday night.
It has been a ray of hope for the multinational effort to find the Titan, which disappeared after launch on Sunday with five men aboard.
But Karson said he wouldn’t be “surprised if that, wherever that sound is, there’s no submarine there.”
The wreckage of the Titanic is 12,500 feet underwater, about 11,000 feet deeper than many US and British Navy submarines can submerge.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, he said: ‘One possibility is that the sounds are bouncing off the rubble. So it’s a more complicated echo.
‘It’s just not bouncing off a thing. It’s bouncing off a lot of things. And it’s like, you know, dropping a marble in a can. It’s rattling and that would confuse the location.
‘The blows, I heard the Coast Guard talk about it. I wonder how much of this is just wishful thinking.
‘Is it really a knock or just an unidentified sound? I think that’s a more accurate description at this point.
“In previous investigations, looking for lost objects on the seabed, I know that all kinds of crazy sounds were discovered. It’s just one more thing we don’t understand about the ocean, our own planet.
It is not known where the sound is coming from or how far away it is. Personally, I’m concerned that the sound is coming from something far away from where they should be looking.
But they have to follow up. It’s the best track right now. Everything is being done. It’s all hands on deck, international ships, everyone is doing their best.’
Jeff Karson, professor emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Syracuse University, told DailyMail.com that the sounds heard are likely “illusions” by the Coast Guard.
Shahzada Dawood, 48, a board member of the UK-based charity Prince’s Trust, plus her son Suleman Dawood, 19, are on board.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush (left) and billionaire Hamish Harding (right), CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai, are also on board.
French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet, considered the world’s leading expert on the Titanic, was on the ship Titan.
US Coast Guard First District response coordinator Jamie Frederick would not confirm the sounds were 30 minutes apart, as had been reported, nor would he describe them as an SOS signal.
The Titan lost communication during the dive to 12,500 feet below the Atlantic, and oxygen supplies were due to run out by 7 a.m. EST.
Billionaire Hamish Harding, chief executive of Action Aviation in Dubai, and Shahzada Dawood, 48, a board member of UK-based charity Prince’s Trust, plus their son Suleman Dawood, 19, are all aboard.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is also on the ship, along with French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet, considered the world’s leading expert on the Titanic.
The US Navy and Coast Guard are leading an international search, including high-tech submersibles, jet aircraft and ships that can search 20,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
Officials confirmed today that they have extended the surface search area to 10,000 square miles of the Atlantic.
But Professor Karson cautioned that the sub was most likely underwater, as the rescue effort “should have found it a long time ago” if it was on the surface.
Victor 6000 is a French unmanned ROV that is deployed by the ship L’Atalante and can reach depths of 20,000 feet.
Nautile is deployed by L’Atalante, a French research ship that has joined the Titan rescue efforts. She can stay underwater for eight hours at a time.
Like the other submersibles deployed to search for Titan, Nautile can reach depths of 20,000 feet.
He added: ‘I don’t know why they are looking in such a wide area on the surface. It can’t go that far, the batteries aren’t strong enough, it can’t go very fast.
It has to go pretty much down. The good news is that if they find it and release it, they’ll be on the surface in two hours.
‘If there’s no sound coming from the submarine, not even thumping, that’s not good. There was clearly an electronic failure of some kind.
They lost all that communication and so on. But that suggests there could have been a catastrophic mechanical failure. There are far more bad possibilities than good at this stage.
“I think there are a lot of people who won’t be surprised if that, wherever that sound is, there isn’t a submarine there. I hope it’s there. Everybody does. But there is a very real possibility that it is something else.
He explained that triangulating the source of the sound is usually simple, but the distance from the top of the ocean to the bottom of the sea is “completely dark and silent,” meaning officials are “groping in the dark.”
OceanGate’s Titan submersible disappeared shortly after leaving for the Titanic wreck Sunday morning and its oxygen supply is running low.
As the search for the missing Titan submersible grows increasingly desperate, some of the world’s most advanced underwater search teams have been deployed to explore the depths of the Atlantic.
The rescue team was seen arriving in St John’s, Newfoundland on US military aircraft last night.
But there is hope that remotely operated vehicles could reach the depths of the wreck and identify objects more clearly.
Professor Karson said: “This noise that they’ve detected, if it’s coming from the submarine, they should be able to track that sound in the same way by having multiple directions from different echo points.”
That could be these sonar buoys that they spew to the surface. That’s why the planes are involved, the planes detect the sound they hear the sound of the buoys and they could locate the source of the sound if there are enough of them.
“And I think they’re also using ROVs, to do that on the bottom of the sea, which also have sonar. When they drive, they scan the bottom of the sea and everything that is out there, that sticks out, the sound bounces back.
‘It’s exactly the same way a bat navigates. This sound has bounced off objects. The problem is that even relatively small objects sometimes reflect a lot of sound.
‘With this debris field, there’s just a bunch of junk down there. That is reflecting. So more hunting and pecking is required, the best that can happen is that if the sounds persist, they can at least locate the source of that sound.
I am Rakesh Sharma, I associated with Elite News as an Editor, since 2021. I take care of all the news operations like content, budget, hiring and policy making.