This undated image provided by OceanGate Expeditions in June 2021 shows the company’s Titan submersible. File
| Photo Credit: AP

A mission specialist for the company that owned the Titan submersible that imploded in 2023 is scheduled to testify before the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday, September 19, 2024.

Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on September 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

Also Read: Titan submersible | Deep sea tragedy

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Mr. Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Mr. Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington State, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended.

The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes, and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometres) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, the wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 metres) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021. (AP) GRS GRS

Almost a year after the Titan sub implosion, an Ohio real estate investor intends to prove that the expedition can be completed safely by sending a two-person submersible down to Titanic-level depths. Billionaire Larry Connor said he and Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey will travel more than 12,400 feet to the Titanic shipwreck site in the submersible, as per a report in the New York Post.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the investor Larry Connor said, “I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way.”

Mr Connor has designed a Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, a $20 million vessel, which will carry out the voyage. It has been named “4000” for the depth in meters it can reach. “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago,” he added.

Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey told WSJ that Mr Connor called him a few days after the Titan sub implosion and said that need to build a sub that could dive safely. “You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to (Titanic-level depths) repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,” Mr Lahey told about the billionaire. However, the real estate investor has not mentioned any specific date or timeline.

Mr Lahey was among the numerous industry critics who attacked OceanGate before and following the catastrophe, accusing it of questionable safety standards. Following the implosion, he called OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush’s strategy for getting people on board “quite predatory.”

Notably, the passengers on Titan had to sign a waiver that classified the ship as “experimental” three times and listed numerous ways in which they could die, as per a report in Business Insider. Errors, unsuccessful travel, and a sense of insecurity were also mentioned by previous travellers.

British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman and Stockton Rush, died in the tragic accident. OceanGate has since then stopped these expeditions.

Experts recovered presumed human remains from what was left of the Titan sub after almost five days. Mangled debris recovered from the small submersible was offloaded in eastern Canada, which brought to an end a difficult search-and-recovery operation. A debris field was also found on the seafloor, 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, which sits more than two miles below the ocean’s surface and 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.