July 6 (UPI) — OceanGate said in an announcement on its website Thursday that it is suspending operations in the wake of its submersible’s implosion during a deep dive to the Titanic.
“OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations,” the announcement said.
In mid-June, OceanGate’s submersible Titan lost contact with its surface ship while on a dive to view the wreckage of the HMS Titanic, the iconic British ocean liner that sank in 1912, claiming more than 1,500 lives.
After days of an international search effort that captured global attention, it was determined that the Titan had imploded on the journey down, as evidenced by debris discovered in the area where the submersible was last known to be, which was about 1,600 feet from the sunken ocean liner.
Company CEO Stockton Rush was among the five victims of the disaster aboard the company’s submersible named Titan.
Also on board the doomed vessel when it was lost June 18 were British billionaire Hamish Harding, the owner of Action Aviation; French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and prominent British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
Rush told video blogger Alan Estrada in 2021 that he had broken some rules to make Titanic trips possible.
“I’d like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General [Douglas] MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break,'” Rush said. “And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”
The U.S. Coast Guard is using a Marine Board Investigation, the highest level of investigation to probe how the implosion happened.
That probe includes looking into whether “an act of misconduct, incompetence, negligence, unskillfulness, or willful violation of law committed by any individual licensed, certificated, or documented has contributed to the cause of the casualty, or to a death involved in the casualty, so that appropriate remedial action may be taken.”
The U.S. Navy captured the sound of the implosion around the time contact with the submersible was lost.
Former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Tom Haueter told ABC News the Navy’s investigation is uncharted territory and might take months to fully analyze the failures that led to the implosion.
“This is the first fatality on a passenger carriage submarine I can think of and certainly the first one going into Titanic at this depth,” Haueter said.
