The 'Titan' submersible company announces the end of its commercial and underwater exploration operations | International

OceanGate, the company that managed the tourist submersible Titanwhose implosion two weeks ago during a dive to the wreck of the titanic cost the lives of its five occupants, has suspended all exploration and commercial operations, according to its website. The Washington-based company has provided no details other than the banner red that warns of the end of its activity. OceanGate planned to conduct two “exploration missions” to the wreckage of the 1912 ocean liner on her maiden voyage in June 2024, while its offer (“We invite you to join us on a high seas adventure to explore 95% of the seabed that human eyes have rarely seen Explore the remains of the titanic in 2023″) has been frozen in a historical present.

Under the unified direction of the US Coast Guard, with the participation of the Canadian transportation security agency and observers from France and the United Kingdom - countries of origin of four of the victims - the ongoing investigation is trying to determine the cause of the implosion of the submersible, from which material remains and other possibly human remains have been recovered on the seabed, at a depth of 3,800 meters. The effect of the implosion, caused by the external pressure of the cabin, disintegrated the bodies of the passengers.

The company that, according to Stockton Rush, its CEO and pilot of the deadly dive, intended to become a sort of underwater SpaceX - in reference to the Elon Musk company that has popularized space travel - had been the target of criticism and repeated warnings for the lack of homologation of safety certificates, in addition to fueling the debate on the excessive risks of the new types of extreme or adventure tourism. He Titana cylinder of titanium and carbon fiber barely 6.5 meters long, began its dive to visit the wreck of the titanic on Sunday June 18 in the waters of the North Atlantic, about 700 kilometers southwest of Newfoundland (Canada), from where the device was transferred to the high seas by a mother ship. The descent and return to the surface were to take seven hours.

Less than two hours after the start of the dive, contact with the ship was lost, leading to a colossal rescue operation, surrounded by intensive media coverage. Four days later, the discovery of material remains on the seabed, just 500 meters from the bow of the titanic, confirmed the worst forecasts, since the state of the pieces pointed to the implosion, or violent disintegration, of the cabin. The five occupants -the aforementioned Stockton, a British explorer, a French navigator specialized in diving in the titanic and a British-Pakistani father and son were presumed dead outright. The Coast Guard announced a few days later that the pieces located and recovered by underwater robots were possibly human remains.

While waiting to know the conclusions of the investigation, which could take months due to the complexity of the seabed and the search itself, the most plausible hypothesis about what happened is that pointed out by the US Navy, which on Sunday, December 18, June detected an anomaly consistent with the possibility of implosion. Therefore, the Titan It would have disintegrated at the beginning of its trip, although the search operation lasted four more days, giving rise to a very expensive ransom whose bill is still not clear who should pay.

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