On Monday, Guillermo Sohnlein, OceanGate’s co-founder, is scheduled to testify before the US Coast Guard on the Titan submersible implosion.
The OceanGate Titan imploded in June 2023, killing five people, including fellow co-founder Stockton Rush. A public hearing by the Marine Board of Investigation about the OceanGate Titan tragedy opened on September 16th, and several people within the company have already testified.
Sohnlein and Rush launched OceanGate together in 2009. Still, Sohnlein left the Washington state-based company years before these events transpired and was not involved in developing the infamous Titan deep-ocean submersible. Sohnlein is expected to provide testimony about how the company worked.
The OceanGate Titan’s implosion
In June 2023, the OceanGate Titan went under the ocean and never rose again. The catastrophe was the first implosion of a manned deep-ocean submersible in history.
The Titan went underwater and lost communication with the Polar Prince, its support vessel, an hour and forty-five minutes into the dive on June 18, 2023. Four days later, the US Coast Guard found the submersible’s wreckage, including some of the remains of those aboard.
Along with CEO Stockton Rush, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, British businessman Hamish Harding, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet died in the implosion.
The hearings so far for the Titan submersible tragedy
Former OceanGate operations director and whistleblower David Lochridge said in the hearings that he believed what happened to the Titan was “inevitable” and that the company did not follow the standards for deep-water submersibles when building the submersible. Lochridge clashed with CEO Rush various times over the company’s priorities.
Lochridge said in the hearings, “The whole idea behind the company was to make money.” He added, “There was very little in the way of science.” Lochridge was fired and sued by OceanGate in 2018 for releasing confidential information. He followed with a countersuit claiming wrongful termination.
Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton, said that the Titan was not ready for its intended purpose. Triton Submarines is another deep-ocean submersible company that was founded in 2008.
“It looked to me like a lot of the stuff was not quite ready for prime time,” Lahey said in the hearings.
Lahey also said the Titan failed to meet standards, adding, “The certification process works. We know it does. Our track record of safety proves it. We need to insist on continued human exploration of the deep sea in certified, accredited machines, not experimental ones. There’s no place for experimental machines in the deep sea.”
During the hearings, OceanGate mission specialist Fred Hagen also said, “Anyone that felt safe going to depths in the Titan was deluded or delusional; it was an experimental vessel, and it was clear that it was dangerous. You don’t do it because it’s safe. You do it because it’s an adrenaline rush.”
