Ocean Gate, the company that owns the titan submersible, which imploded last June with five people on board while traveling to see the wreckage of the Titanic, announced Thursday that it suspended all its commercial operations and its exploration trips.
Without giving further details, The company published a sign on the front page of its website announcing the suspension of its operations.
US-based OceanGate reports that it “has suspended its exploration and commercial operations,” the page read.
The “Titan”, a small submersible of about 6.5 meters in length, submerged on June 18 to observe the remains of the Titanic and was supposed to return to the surface seven hours later but, when less than two hours had elapsed, it was lost contact with the ship.
On June 25, the US Coast Guard announced an official investigation to discover the causes of the Titan’s implosion and the Canadian authorities are conducting another.
(Also read: The remains of Titan are recovered from the ocean: this is how part of the submarine remained after the tragedy)
This is how Oceangate announced the suspension of its activities.
Screenshot Oceangate
The objective is to prevent the event from happening again and to do so A committee of experts is trying to figure out what happened to the submersible, which imploded on June 18, as was discovered after several days of searching for his remains in a rescue operation in which several countries were involved and which captured the attention of millions of people around the world.
The committee of experts may also make recommendations to the competent authorities on the imposition of civil or criminal sanctions.
The OceanGate company, owner of the submersible and operator of the expeditions, has not updated its website since what happened and you can still see the tours he offered aboard submersibles to places like the Azores islandsthe Bahamas or the Atlantic coast of Canada, the area where the Titanic sank in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg.
Aboard the Titan, “intrepid travelers” could participate in expeditions that lasted a total of eight days, although the dive to the Titanic at a depth of 3,800 meters lasted only about ten hours.
(Also: Why did five deaths shock the world and hundreds did not?)
Stockton Rush, in the submarine that imploded on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic.
Ocean Gate Expeditions
“The dive will not only provide an exciting and unique travel experience, but will also help the scientific community learn more about the shipwreck and the deep ocean,” says the website about this expedition, whose price starts at $250,000 per person. .
In addition to the missing Titan, which could be submerged up to 4,000 meters deep, the company owns the Cyclops 1 submersible, which can carry up to five people to depths of 500 meters.
(You can read: Titan: the warnings that Stockton Rush, founder of Ocean Gate, ignored)
The Titan was the world’s only carbon-fiber submersible capable of submerging five people to 4,000 meters, OceanGate claims. It was designed and built by OceanGate in collaboration with experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington and made its underwater debut in 2018.
“Through innovative use of modern materials, Titan is lighter, roomier and more comfortable than any other deep-immersion submersible exploring the ocean today,” the company states.
They were the five passengers of the Titan submersible.
After several days of searching, on June 22, the US Coast Guard announced that “debris” had been found near the area where the remains of the Titanic are found. Later, she confirmed that the remains corresponded to the external part of the Titan submersible.
(Also: The millionaire who gave up going in the submersible: “The technology did not give him confidence”)
In it were traveling the millionaire Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood with his son Suleman, a 19-year-old student; British explorer Hamish Harding; the French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and the CEO of the firm OceanGate, Stockton Rush.
The porthole of the ship was not designed to withstand the pressure at 4,000 meters deep
As soon as it was known that contact with the submersible had been lost, criticism focused on OceanGate, suspected of negligence. In court documents from 2018, a former company executive, David Lochridge, claims he was fired because he had doubts about the safety of the submersible.
According to Lochridge, the porthole of the ship was not designed to withstand the pressure at a depth of 4,000 meters, which put passengers at risk.
William Kohnen, an engineer at the head of a US committee on manned submersibles, told the BBC that his group had also expressed concern about the safety conditions of the “Titan”.
*With EFE and AFP
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