The United States, Canada and France are in a frantic race to find five surviving passengers of the Titanic mini-submarine that disappeared near the wreck of the Titanic and who have only “about 40 hours” of oxygen.
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The five men are:
– French 77, is a deep-sea scuba diver and marine archeology enthusiast.
France Press agency
A seabed explorer, he spent the early part of his career as a naval officer. Commander of the mopping divers group in Cherbourg (northwest France), then became a submarine pilot in the French Navy. He then moved on to marine archeology, with the excavation of numerous shipwrecks.
In 1986, he became in charge of the deep intervention submarines of the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer). A year ago, a team led by American scientist Robert Ballard, in collaboration with Ifremer, found the wreckage of the Titanic.
Back in 1987, Paul-Henri Nargoulet saw wreckage aboard the French submarine Nautilus. Dozens of dives followed, which notably made it possible to recover several hundred objects. The latest date is summer 2021.
British businessman , 58, is also familiar with Extreme Explorations. Apart from his adventures, which he recounts on social networks, few details are known about the career and fortune of the CEO of Action Aviation, a private jet sales company, founded in 2004.
France Press agency
Hamish Harding graduated from the University of Cambridge in natural sciences and chemical engineering and headed into space a year ago aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket for a ten-minute flight, marking the fifth successful manned mission for Jeff Bezos, his “mentor”.
Has many mentions in the Guinness Book of Records. Among his exploits, a dive in March 2021 with another explorer, Victor Vescovo, into the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean known to date, aboard a two-seat submersible. This mission was the longest spent at this depth (4 hours 15 minutes) with the longest distance traveled (4600 metres).
He and his wife Linda have two sons, including Giles, who at the age of 12 in 2020 became the youngest person to travel to the South Pole, according to the Times reports.
Their family said in a statement that a prominent Pakistani businessman and his son were on board the submarine. that it He is 48 years old, Vice President of Engro Group based in Karachi, South Pakistan, and his son aged 19, and both are British citizens.
Facebook photo/Christine Daoud
Engro has investments in several business sectors: energy, agriculture, petrochemicals, and telecommunications.
– The fifth person, whose presence on board the ship was not confirmed by official sources, according to the media US president of OceanGate Expeditions, the tour operator which he founded in 2009.
Image from OCEANGATE website
The company of what Smithsonian magazine describes as an “intrepid inventor” began in 2021 attracting paying customers to see the wreckage of the Titanic aboard its custom-built submarine. Stockton Rush said visiting the shipwreck was part of a marketing strategy as he was trying to develop innovations for submersible vessels.
According to his company’s website, the American began his career in 1981 as the youngest jet transport pilot in the world, at the age of 19.
In 1984, he became an F-15 fighter flight test engineer for McDonnell Douglas. But over the past 20 years, he’s been involved in several ocean-related tech ventures, including BlueView Technologies, which makes small, high-frequency sonar systems.
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