And then they knew they had an emergency.”Īnother thing to consider: Mercogliano said the Titan lacked an emergency radio beacon that could have floated to the surface and started beeping if there was an emergency. And they probably waited for the period when they expected the Titan to come back to the surface,” he speculated. “They probably were waiting for what was would have been the end of the scheduled voyage. And so what it appears is when they lost communications, they did not assume that this was a disaster at all,” Mercogliano said. The vessel used a rudimentary system that basically communicated with the surface ship through text message, Mercogliano said. Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy, said the people on the Polar Prince likely didn’t call for help after losing communication with the Titan because the submersible had previously experienced communication failures - so such an occurrence didn’t raise immediate alarms. Others suggested the delay could have been due to the unorthodox approach taken by the company behind the experimental vessel. The emergency procedure in question, he said, is typically declared after three consecutive scheduled communications are missed “but can vary slightly between organizations.” “The time delay between declaring a submersible sunk and notification to outside resources and emergency responders appears to be excessive,” said Robert Kraft, a deep-sea explorer who has located missing ships in the ocean. Sean Leet, head of the company that co-owns the Titan’s support ship, refused to discuss the timeline during a news conference Wednesday, saying only that “all protocols were followed for the mission.” But experts familiar with deep-sea exploration said those lost hours raise red flags.
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