Newly released footage shows the high-tech salvaging of debris from the Titan submersible wreck — as the co-founder of the company that made it told investigators that he hopes the deadly disaster does not spell “the end of deep ocean exploration.”
The eerie video, released by the Marine Board of Investigation late Monday, shows a remotely operated vehicle attaching ropes and equipment to what appears to be the end cap of the sunken vessel on June 26 last year.
At one point, the remote vehicle’s camera showed a close-up view of two robot arms maneuvering the retrieval equipment as a shark swam up to the remnants of the Titan sub.
An aerial view later showed a dust-like cloud erupting as the remotely operated vehicle lifted off the ocean floor around 2.5 miles below the surface.
The two-minute clip is among the trove of videos and images that have been released by the Marine Board of Investigation in recent days as part of the Coast Guard’s ongoing public hearing into how last year’s disaster unfolded.
Five people were killed when the Titan submersible suddenly imploded after setting off en route to the famed Titanic wreck site at the bottom of the North Atlantic on June 18, 2023.
The release of the new clip came as Guillermo Sohnlein, a co-founder of the sub owner’s company, OceanGate, told the hearing Monday that he hopes the disaster does not ruin such missions.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” said Sohnlein, who left the company before the Titan disaster.
However, the company’s former operations director David Lochridge testified earlier Monday that he frequently clashed with the company’s other co-founder, Stockton Rush — one of those who died — and how he felt the company was committed only to making money.
Lochridge also added that he’d refused to sign off on what he described as “appalling” faults with the original model of the doomed Titan submersible — which later led to his firing.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed — as is standard practice — before setting off.
The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.
Amber Bay, OceanGate’s former director of administration, was one of the key witnesses scheduled to take the stand on Tuesday.
Rush died alongside British adventurer Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Pakistani father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion and has said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and other investigations since they began.