OceanGate will SUSPEND all exploration and business operations following death of Titanic Five in ‘catastrophic implosion’ during $250,000 mission to wreck of liner
OceanGate has announced it is suspending all exploration and commercial operations after the death of the Titanic Five last month – including the company’s CEO.
‘OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations,’ the top of the company’s official website says.
The notice is listed in small red font on the website’s homepage. It’s unclear when OceanGate added the suspension notice.
Just last week, OceanGate’s website still included pages advertising trips to the Titanic – weeks after five people, including the company CEO, were killed on one of the journeys.
A page titled ‘Titan Expedition – Explore the Titanic’ was still available online which offered a chance to dive to the shipwreck in the company’s submersible.
The five men onboard had all died after the Titan sub, pictured here, imploded on its expedition
‘Intrepid travelers will sail from the Atlantic coast of Canada for an 8-day expedition to dive on the iconic wreck that lies 380 miles offshore and 3,800 meters below the surface,’ the page states.
Titan suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ during a voyage to the wreckage of the Titanic, 12,500ft beneath the Atlantic’s surface.
Five passengers, including Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, 58, and his 19-year-old son Suleman were killed during a dive to the Titanic last month.
Rush – a self-professed ‘innovator’ who sought to push the boundaries on passenger diving – was one of five died in what proved to be the Titan’s final voyage, after its pressure chamber imploded near the 3800meter depths where the Titanic rests.
He reportedly believed going to the depths of the Atlantic in the Titan was ‘safer than crossing the street’, despite having been warned by dozens of experts in 2018 that his company’s ‘experimental’ approaches could be ‘catastrophic’.
The safety of the submersible and OceanGate’s dismissal of several warnings has drawn considerable criticism after the Titan went missing during a June 18 dive to the seafloor.
The CEO – who considered himself to be more of a scientist than a salesman despite much of his efforts being focused on marketing the sub trips – was begged in 2019 to suspend operations after a submersible expert heard cracking sounds during one of the Titan’s dives in the Bahamas.
