OceanGate, owner of destroyed ‘Titan’ submersible, suspends operations

The American company OceanGate, which operated the submersible which imploded with five people on board near the wreck of the titanicannounced Thursday that it had “suspended its explorations and commercial operations” in a message on its website.

The company had been widely criticized after the tragedy, with doubts hovering over the safety of the device.

THE Titan, a small submersible about 6.5 meters long, had dived on June 18 to observe the wreckage and was to resurface seven hours later. But contact was lost less than two hours after he left.

A vast rescue operation, highly publicized, had been set up to try to find the passengers. Teams eventually discovered that the device had imploded shortly after its dive, killing all five men instantly — including OceanGate boss Stockton Rush.

Found on the seabed at a depth of nearly 4,000 meters, the debris was brought back to earth for analysis. Several investigations were opened by Canada and the United States to determine the causes of the implosion.

“OceanGate has suspended its explorations and commercial operations”, can we now read on the company’s website, without further details.

It is always possible to consult the presentations of the expeditions offered by OceanGate, including the one to the wreck of the titanicone of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20the century, charged US$250,000 per seat.

Corporate negligence?

As soon as the device disappeared, criticism focused on OceanGate, suspected of negligence.

In court documents from 2018, a former executive of the company claimed to have been fired after raising serious doubts about the safety of the submersible.

According to him, David Lochridge, the porthole of the device was not designed to withstand the pressure suffered at 4000 meters depth, which put the passengers in danger.

William Kohnen, an engineer at the head of an American committee on manned submersibles bringing together companies and researchers, told the BBC that his group had raised concerns about the Titan developed by OceanGate.

The co-founder of OceanGate, Guillermo Söhnlein, assured at the end of June that security was a “key element” of the company’s culture.

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