[Dion]

Explorers recall danger, thrill of earlier dives to 'Everest of shipwrecks'

Lynch said that when he made the descent aboard the Russian-owned Mir submersibles, the practice was always to send two vessels down at once. That way, one could help if the other ran into trouble.

The descent took about two hours, he said. The submarine would be shut down to minimum power for the journey down, and then the pilot would power it up about 15 minutes before it reached the sea floor.

The Titan is said to have lost contact with its launch ship about an hour and 45 minutes after it began its descent. Lynch said though he's not familiar with its protocols, he wonders if the submersible also powered down for the descent and then was unable to power up when it got close to its destination.

Lynch said that on his voyage he asked what would happen if someone panicked due to claustrophobia and was told, very seriously, “the Russians keep a really big wrench in the submersible .... If somebody suddenly goes nuts, what do you do? All you can do is just knock them out.”

Toronto-based physician and undersea explorer Joe MacInnis recalled Tuesday a close call he had at the Titanic site in 1991 when the pilot of the Mir submersible he was in got one of the landing skids stuck under some wire on the ocean floor.

“It was the longest 30 minutes of my life," MacInnis said in an interview. "It was what we call a thick adrenalin moment."

What helped save him was having a second submersible nearby that came in to assess the situation. "The two sub pilots talked back and forth. And the second pilot helped our pilot get free of the tangle of wire — moving backwards, moving forwards .... We had this kind of self-rescue capability which made the difference, really made the difference," he said.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...6513991d&ei=44