A sound detected in the search for a missing submarine with 44 crew members aboard is consistent with a non-nuclear explosion, officials in Argentina said Thursday.
Argentine Navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said at a news conference the relatives of the crew have been informed and that the search will continue until there is full certainty about the fate of the ARA San Juan.
The disclosure was made as more help arrived in a multinational search as concern grew that the vessel’s oxygen supply could soon start to run out.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense sent a special helicopter with emergency life support pods to join the hunt that includes planes and ships from a dozen nations.
Balbi said Wednesday that searchers were returning to a previously scanned part of the ocean after determining that a previously unnoticed “hydro-acoustic anomaly” was detected Nov. 15, just hours after the final contact with the ARA San Juan.
He described the blast, which was detected around the same time that the submarine sent its last signal last week, as “abnormal, singular, short, violent” and “non-nuclear.”
Argentine navy ships as well as a U.S. P-8 Poseidon aircraft and a Brazilian air force plane would return to the area Thursday to check out the sound, according to Balibi, which originated about 30 miles north of the submarine’s last registered position.
U.S. Navy Lt. Lily Hinz later said the unusual sound detected underwater could not be attributed to marine life or naturally occurring noise in the ocean.
“It was not a whale, and it is not a regularly occurring sound,” Hinz said.
A U.S. Navy plane detected an object Wednesday near the area the submarine sent its last signal during a search flight over the South Atlantic, a witness told Reuters after traveling on board the plane.
The crew emphasized that the object could not be identified, and it was not known if it was related to the ARA San Juan, the news agency reported.
The San Juan, a German-built diesel-electric sub, went missing as it was sailing from the extreme southern port of Ushuaia to the city of Mar del Plata, about 250 miles southeast of Buenos Aires.
Experts worry that oxygen for the crew would last only seven to 10 days if the sub was intact but submerged. Authorities do not know if the sub rose to the surface to replenish its oxygen supply and charge batteries.
Relatives of the crew continue to wait at a naval base in Mar del Plata, as the case grips Argentina, SkyNews reported.
The hashtags “Los 44” (The 44) and Enrique Balbi have become trending topics on Twitter and relatives have featured on the front of newspapers in the country.
The U.S. Navy has sent two P-8 Poseidons, a naval research ship, a submarine rescue chamber and sonar-equipped underwater vehicles. There are also U.S. Navy sailors from the San Diego-based Undersea Rescue Command are also helping with the search.
