Former submarine captain describes possible conditions inside submersible
Various environmental factors in the ocean are likely complicating efforts to identify noises heard on sonar as the search for a missing submersible continues into its fourth day, according to one diving expert.
Rick Murcar, who is the international training director for the National Association of Cave Divers and the owner of Aquatic Adventures of Florida Inc., explained that sound travels faster in the water — which is making it more challenging for rescuers to pinpoint where it is coming from.
Things like the currents can deflect the sound so that it appears like it is coming from miles away from where the actual source is.
The Coast Guard said an aircraft picked up on noises Tuesday and Wednesday in the Atlantic Ocean. It relocated equipment to the area, but so far, efforts to figure out what was making the sound have not yielded any results, the Coast Guard said.
Murcar said to think of this effort to locate the noise as trying to pinpoint a specific drum in a stadium full of cheering fans and other instruments.
“Picture a massive stadium that has a roof on it, and you have an aircraft flying over top and it drops sensors down to listen to the sound inside that stadium,” he said. The person inside the stadium is playing a snare in a constant, beating pattern, in addition to all of the other drums he has, Murcar said.
Now, to narrow down the location of that snare, he said, analysts have to first get rid of all of the other environmental noises.
“They have to negate any aspect of the impact that the boating plays into the equation,” he said. In the stadium analogy, this would be things like the fans, the guitars and the keyboards.
“And then we’re going to put it in the dark,” Murcar said. “Once they can actually get down to where the drum set is, and the couple square feet that that's taking up, they have to negate each and every individual drum to find the very distinctive one that tells them it's a piccolo snare."
"Then they're going to go look for it with an ROV (a remotely operated vehicle) — with a flashlight in their hand,” he added, completing the analogy.
Source: CNN
