A friend of one of the passengers on the missing Titanic submersible believes the reports of “underwater noises” could be a good sign.
Five people have been missing since Sunday, when a small tourist submarine lost touch with its support ship while visiting the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.
Chris Brown, an explorer and friend of the British billionaire Hamish Harding who is on the sub, mentioned reports from the US Coast Guard which claim “underwater noises” were heard in the search area – although this has not yielded any positive results just yet.
Still, Brown told BBC Breakfast on Wednesday: “These reports of knocking sounds – that' got them written all over it.
“Because the idea, if you made a continuous noise, it’s not going to get picked up.
“Doing it at frequency, I know it’s not confirmed, but at frequency every 30 minutes – that suggests human.”
The noises were detected by a Canadian aircraft during the search for the missing submersible, according to an update from the US Coast Guard on Wednesday.
The search and rescue mission is in a race against time, as experts believe the minivan-sized vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, only has enough oxygen to last until Thursday morning.
But, Brown said his friend will remain practical and logical even in these dangerous circumstances.
He explained: ”He’ll be calm, he’s fiercely intellectual.
“He’ll be going through permutations, combinations, ways out, what can be done
“We don’t know the situation. We don’t know if it’s snout, if it’s dropped to the bottom of the ocean. It could even be bobbing around on the surface, but whatever the situation, Hamish is the sort of guy who will be figuring out how to do it.”
More than 10,000 square miles have already been searched but nothing has been found yet.
There are fears that the site is too remote and the search ships are moving too slowly for the rescue efforts.
OceanGate Expeditions allows passengers to dive deep under the sea to see the famous Titanic shipwreck for $250,000 (£195,500).
CBS reporter David Pogue was invited to go on the submersible last year, and revealed there were seven ways for the vessel to get to the ocean surface.
“Several of them work even if there’s no electricity. One of them works even if everybody’s passed out — it’s a time-released sandbag that after 14 hours drops off by itself,” Pogue said.
He also recalled how the submersible is “made of off-the-shelf, improvised parts”, and that it’s controlled with an Xbox game controller.
The reporter said he also read a waiver which explained the “experimental” vessel “has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death”.
Harding, a known explorer and record-setting adventurer, was interviewed by the Indian news magazine The Week, in 2021 after diving to the world’s deepest part of the ocean, the Mariana Trench.
He told the reporter these adventures means “if something goes wrong, you are not coming back”.