right now on early start, lost at sea. the all-out search under way to find a small sub that was taking tourists to the titanic. and new talks to bring americans detained in china back home. and tropical storm gaining strength, tomorrow it could be a hurricane. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m christine romans. it is a race against time to find the five people aboard that submersible. contact with the craft was lost sunday. it has only about four days worth of life support aboard. a billionaire is one of the five passengers along with a father and son from pakistan. brian todd has more. reporter: an urgent search and rescue operation is under way in the north atlantic to find a lost submersible with five people aboard. coast guard has a ship and aircraft on the scene. canadian ships and planes joining the search as well. along with the polar prince, the vessel that transported the missing submersible to the site of the titanic wr
you ll see here first on the story. first, this is an incredible frightening story playing out right now. the clock is ticking. 72 hours to go and counting for the long titanic submersible. the adventure tourist vehicle, which we believe has five individuals on it. we have the identity of one of them. we ll talk about this in just a moment. they lost contact with their home base several hours ago. they were supposed to be down there for six hours and return last night. now, as i said, the race is on to find these people. several government agencies are involved, private entities searching the vast ocean. you can see where the titanic is resting on the floor of the ocean and where this mission went from to take these eco tourists down there, these adventure tourists to see the wreckage up close. it s an extraordinary opportunity. the company that does this is called oceangate expeditions. they use a sub like this. you can see the man at the front of it. it s compared to the
descent. we have to make sure that we are looking at both the surface, using the aerial, and surface vessels. but then expanding into underwater search as well. right now, our capability is limited to sonar. we have been listening for sounds, but we are working very hard to increase the capability. this rescue is a race against time, on its website, ocean gate expeditions, that company that operates the submersible on expeditions down to the titanic. says the 31 foot vessel has up to 96 hours, four days of oxygen for five people. one signal rescuers could be looking for? does it have any of the normal pieces of the unit. like the submersible should have. releasable beacon that would have gone to the surface and could have been sending out a signal? what could ve gone wrong? cnn s weather team says the weather in the area was not overly harsh at the time the vessels submerged. but below the surface, currents
race against time. on its website, oceangate expeditions, the company that operates it down to the titanic, says the 21 foot vessel has four days of oxygen for five people. does it have a releasable beacon that would have gone to the surface and could have been sending out a signal? reporter: the weather team says the weather was not overly harsh at the time the vessel sub merged, but currents could have affected it. it could be entrapped. it is very easy for it to suddenly get caught on something and it can t come back to the surface. reporter: the titanic sank in 1912. more than 1500 people died. the wreck discovered in 1985,
miles faster than any vessel in the water. they ll be searching. these units normally would have a releasable beacon, a signal buoy that would go up if they can t to tell the general area where they are. the coast guard would then come in, find that beacon at the surface, if it was not attached and then track it looking at the weather. we ve done that many times looking for individuals at the surface during wrecks where they were surviving at the surface. they re going to be looking from the sky. they can figure out hundreds of miles in a matter of hours. the fact that it s not being seen and as you pointed out nicely, this unit was designed, this submersible, that in case of an emergency, it would surface on its own. so if it has not done that, then it brings us back down to one