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  • 6/21/2023

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Transcript
00:00 to discuss a bit more about what may well be happening with that submarine. I'm very pleased
00:04 to be joined now by Martin Manders. He's a professor of underwater archaeology at Leiden
00:09 University. Good afternoon to you, sir. Thanks for joining us on the programme.
00:13 Good afternoon. Hi.
00:15 Can I just ask you what you think these banging noises are likely to be and if they give you some
00:21 hope that those on board may still be alive? Well, what I hope they will be, I hope that
00:28 it is people banging on the side of the Titan and that these noises are being picked up
00:36 by the, well, first by the plane and maybe later also by other sonar equipment,
00:45 so that they can position the submersible, because that's one of the biggest issues, right?
00:56 I do think that they will find the submersible, but when do they find it? It's a race against time
01:03 and that makes it so frightening and that makes everybody so much involved. All the viewers are,
01:11 everybody's following it because every hour is so important. And there's a few
01:20 ideas of what could have happened. The most ideal would of course be that the submersible would be,
01:29 well, floating up to the surface and would be there somewhere in this big ocean. So,
01:35 then you can pick it up easily if you find it, pick it up easily and get the people out. But
01:43 another thing could be that it just plunged to the depth. The contact stopped at one hour 45,
01:50 so they may have just arrived, just not have arrived on the seabed. So, if they are somewhere
01:56 stuck on the seabed, where there's a lot of debris, there's also, it's an inundated area,
02:01 it's not just a flat surface, so it might be very difficult to find them also, because there may be
02:07 somewhere behind debris or a rocky area. But if they find them, then still we might be able to
02:16 connect with ROVs, remotely operated vehicles, to connect to the Titan and pull it up. But when it's
02:27 floating somewhere in that four kilometers long water column, then it will be really, really
02:33 difficult to find them. Right, but if I can just clarify something from you here, because,
02:39 you know, given that we know these sounds are coming from the submarine, one thing that isn't
02:46 particularly clear, at least to me, is if we know it's making a sound, why don't we know where that
02:50 sound is coming from? Why aren't the surveillance teams able to detect at least whether it's
02:55 bobbing on the surface of the water or if it's trapped right down where the Titanic is?
02:59 Because you need several positions to locate that sound, right? So if you hear that sound
03:05 somewhere in the ocean, you have to keep in mind that it may be at four kilometers of depth,
03:12 so a few degrees difference in the positioning and you're miles off. So it is not that easy to just
03:25 pinpoint the location. If they would have pingers, for example, the instruments that make little
03:32 sounds, they could, you know, because the sounds keep on pinging, they could maybe fix the position
03:39 better. But this is not that easy, first of all. They also have to find out if it really is
03:48 from the submarine or the submersible. I hope it is. And then the search continues. And it's just
03:56 not that easy. Absolutely. The challenges are clear, sir. But if I can just ask you about some
04:02 of the criticisms of the company that sent this submarine down Ocean Gate, as you may have heard
04:08 in that report, an expert who apparently warned about some of the issues on the submarine was
04:14 fired in 2018. And I wonder, as we're learning more and more about the way that Ocean Gate has
04:20 operated in the past couple of years, whether you sort of share that criticism that they've acted
04:25 rather recklessly here and more could have been done to ensure those people on board were safe
04:29 before they went down? Yeah, that's a very difficult question you asked me because what
04:35 they were saying, they were pushing boundaries and this is why they didn't ensure their equipment.
04:43 I think that is rather reckless. And I know that they had contracts to sign,
04:51 waivers, but we do that all the time, of course. So I think, yes, indeed, it is reckless not to
05:00 test everything up to its max. But I wasn't there doing those tests. But if it's correct of what
05:10 they're saying, I think, yeah, you put quite a lot of lives on the line. But not only that,
05:16 it is also bad for the industry. And just briefly, finally, we know the clock is ticking. You've
05:22 already mentioned that. Just can you give us a sense of how many hours you think those rescue
05:28 crews now have to find those on board alive? Yeah, well, they said 96 hours of oxygen that
05:34 they had with them. That also depends a little bit on how calm people are. So if you're panicking,
05:42 you're using much more oxygen. So it is more or less. They expected the people to have oxygen
05:53 until tomorrow morning. So time is really running out because you also have to keep in mind that the
05:58 rescue operation has to start as well. And maybe at a depth of almost four kilometres. So time is
06:07 running out and the next couple of hours are going to be crucial. Professor Martin Manders,
06:15 thank you very much indeed, sir, for your time today. Thanks.