- Rescue efforts will not stop when the Titan's 96 hours of oxygen are up, USCG said.
- There may be ways in which the crew can conserve oxygen, an expert told Insider.
The search-and-rescue effort to recover the missing Titan submersible will carry on beyond the 96 hours of oxygen it had, the US Coast Guard has confirmed.
"We will be continuing the search today," a spokesperson for USCG told Insider. A press conference has been put on hold and is not expected to take place today, they added.
"We'll always continue searching until we are absolutely certain that there is going to be no chance of survival," Matthew Schanck, search-and-rescue expert and founder of MarSAR International, told Insider Wednesday.
The crew onboard includes the CEO of OceanGate expeditions, a British billionaire adventurer, a French diver and explorer, and a father and son from Pakistan.
Experts have estimated the crew could run out of oxygen Thursday, but rescuers aren't giving up hope.
"There may be ways in which they can conserve that [air], especially having the likes of the French Navy diver on board who will know potentially some sort of strategies and tactics they can use to try and conserve the air on board," said Schanck, who is not involved in the rescue effort.
Oxygen consumption can vary substantially depending on how the passengers could be behaving, experts previously told Insider.
If they lost power to their heaters, the crew would likely be cold, and their shivering could increase their oxygen consumption, Mike Tipton, head of the extreme environments laboratory at Portsmouth University, UK, said.
It's important for the search-and-rescue team to stay motivated by the hope that the crew members could be brought home, he added.
"We have to remain optimistic and hopeful," Capt. Jamie Frederick, the response coordinator for the First Coast Guard District said during a news conference Wednesday, per CNN.
But even in the worst-case scenario, if all hope for the crew's survival is lost, the search effort would likely carry on, he said.
"That's also important is bringing somebody home even if they don't make it," he said.
Nevertheless, the search-and-rescue mission could eventually be called off without finding the ship.
"I'd like to think that we would be able to locate the craft and the people, but we should also be prepared for every eventuality," he said.
That includes "the potential that they may not be found given the depths and the complexity of the situation," said Schanck.
The search area for the missing submersible covers about twice the surface of Connecticut at this point, and stretches down under the surface as deep as 2-and-a-half miles, Frederick said, per CNN.