The situation is becoming more and more difficult for the 53 members of the crew of an Indonesian submarine, which has been ignored since Wednesday, with authorities fearing they may have already depleted their oxygen supplies.
Hundreds of troops and about 20 ships have been mobilized since Wednesday to locate the KRI Nanggala 402, a 44-year-old submarine that sank in the sea north of Bali for military training and has been missing since.
Her Navy Indonesia had then estimated that the maximum oxygen reserves available to the crew in the event of a power failure were 72 hours, which expired earlier today, at around 2:00 a.m. local time on Saturday, making it almost impossible for him to have survived. the crew.
“No progress has been made yet. I hope we find it in the afternoon. “We are still in control of the area,” said Admiral Julius Vitzonzo, a spokesman for the Navy.
On Thursday, the Navy announced that it had located an “object” with a large magnetic field at a depth of 50 to 100 meters below sea level and is trying to find its exact location to determine if it is a submarine.
About 20 Indonesian Navy vessels are taking part in the search, with assistance from Australia and the United States.
An oil spill found north of the island of Bali, where the submarine had sunk, is a cause for concern as it could mean that there has been a fuel leak from it, which may indicate that it has been damaged, according to experts.
The Indonesian Navy had initially announced that the submarine could reach a depth of 700 meters, much larger than the 500 meters it is capable of sailing.
“If the submarine is severely damaged, it may mean several things, for example that the space available for the crew is very limited and that there is little oxygen,” said Colin Koch, a marine expert and researcher at the Ecole des Etudes internationales. S. Rajaratnam in Singapore.
Koch also noted that the assumption that oxygen in the submarine is sufficient for 72 hours is optimistic, as it has limited ability to produce oxygen because it produces energy with a diesel engine. “So it is possible that oxygen has already been depleted,” he said.
Experts such as Koch point out that Indonesia should expand its search area if the object found is not the submarine, and warn that if it is lost “at an extreme depth”, it may be impossible to retrieve it. on the surface.
The Bali Sea reaches a depth of more than 1,500 meters.
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