Desperate search for sub near Titanic with about 40 hours of oxygen left

BOSTON: Rescue teams raced against time Tuesday to find a deep-diving tourist submersible that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic with five people on board and an estimated 40 hours of oxygen left.

All communication was lost with the 21-foot (6.5-meter) Titan craft during a descent Sunday to the Titanic, which sits more than two miles (nearly four kilometers) below the surface of the North Atlantic.

The submersible was carrying three fee-paying passengers — British billionaire Hamish Harding, and Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.

The US and Canadian Coast Guards have deployed ships and planes in an intensive search for the vessel, which was attempting to dive near the wreck of the Titanic some 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick told reporters that the rescue efforts over an area of 7,600 square miles, larger than the US state of Connecticut, “have not yielded any results.”