The more time that passes, the harder it will be to find the submersible. We talk about the “golden hours” in any search, and the first 24 are key.
Statistically less than 10 per cent of people survive after 24 hours, whether it’s people missing at sea or in an earthquake or a flood.
On the positive side, we’re not talking about another MH370 here. The missing Malaysia Airlines plane’s transponder went off and the search teams had a scour such a huge area of the Indian Ocean. The plane went down in 2014 and it still hasn’t been solved.
This is a lot simpler. It’s a “down and up” dive. But there are still huge challenges.
MH370 had a black box that pinged. They don’t have that information. The ocean floor is a lot more rugged than land with massive canyons. The potential to get lost down there is huge.
A lot of people think water is homogeneous — just a massive bowl. But there are different layers, different levels of salinity. It’s why certain Second World War submarines were able to hide. There are different levels of oxygen as well.
The search area is quite remote. Currents move in different ways at different levels so it’s very hard to model where they might be given the conditions.
The size of the search area depends on the where they lost contact. It’s very deep, so if the vessel went off course a little, their footprint will be significantly larger.
If you consider the search for the missing footballer Emiliano Sala, the aircraft was found under 200ft of water. It was relatively shallow. They did a sonar survey and it was found within that grid.
This is a lot tougher. We’re talking about a much deeper column with much more rugged conditions. Also the vessel is quite small and it will be dark.
Aquatic searches are tricky — and more than three times as many people go missing on water than on land. It’s an under-researched field.
