Two of the five people on the missing Titanic tour submersible have ties to the Bay Area.
A frantic and massive search effort for the missing Titan submersible continued Tuesday roughly 900 miles east of Cape Cod. The sub lost communication on Sunday, less than two hours into a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
"There could’ve been an accident," retired Royal Navy Rear Admiral Chris Parry said. "It could have become entangled in the wreckage of Titanic. It could indeed have had a catastrophic failure."
The names of the five men aboard the sub were made public Tuesday. They are British billionaire Hamish Harding; French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet; Stockton Rush, a Cal graduate and the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owns the missing sub; and Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.
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Shahzada Dawood has ties to the Bay Area. Since 2020, he has been on the board of the SETI Institute based in Mountain View. The institute is dedicated to identifying life across the universe. A spokesperson said the institute is deeply concerned about Shahzada and his son and are in contact with their family.
The SETI Institute and its CEO, Bill Diamond, issued the following statement: "The entire SETI Institute community is devastated by the news of our Trustee, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, who are on board the missing submersible with three other passengers and crew. Shahzada is not only a member of our Board of Trustees but also a dear friend and part of the SETI Institute family. We are holding out every hope for a successful rescue mission and the safe return of our brother and all those on board. Our hearts go out to Shahzada, Suleman and the entire Dawood family. The situation is extremely serious, but we extend our thoughts and best wishes for a positive outcome."
As the five men face the possibility of running out of breathable air within the next two days, commercial diver Chris Lemons understands what the men might be experiencing. In 2012, he lost his air supply while diving to repair an oil rig.
"I was left with about five or six minutes of breathing gas on the bottom of the North Sea and about 4 degrees of water," Lemons said. "It took my rescuers about 40-43 minutes I think to get back to me."
Lemons said for the men on the Titan, it's critical to stay calm and regulate their breathing. He said air supply is not their only concern. Depending on what happened, the sub may have also lost heat.
"People always assume that it's going to be the breathing gas that gets you, but actually it's often not," Lemons said. "It’s often the cold that will get you first. Hypothermia is a serious, serious danger at that depth if they're not being artificially heated. Carbon dioxide is also a huge, huge issue."
Canadian search planes have dropped sonar buoys in the rough seas, hoping to hear something from the sub in the deep expanse of the north Atlantic Ocean.
"They really only have one option," Lemons said. "They're so deep that any exposure to the water for example would be unconscionable. That would be fatal. They need to be brought up in one piece."
