OceanGate has suspended its business and all explorations following titanic sub implosion
OceanGate, the company with the submersible that was destroyed diving down to the wreck of the Titanic, have announced they've suspended all business and expeditions.
It was the OceanGate sub Titan which 'catastrophically imploded' and killed all five people on board, including company CEO Stockton Rush.
An extensive search and rescue effort has managed to recover some of the debris of the sub, which will be studied as part of an investigation to determine exactly what went wrong.
Until recently, the OceanGate site had been advertising further trips down to the ocean floor to visit the wreck of the Titanic, but these have since been taken down.
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That may be it for OceanGate altogether as now the site bears the message: "OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations."
Along with OceanGate CEO Rush the Titan sub disaster also claimed the lives of Hamish Harding, Paul-Henry Nargeolet and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
A statement from the company had called the five 'true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure' but it appears as though there may be no more ventures for OceanGate.
Since the sub disaster, there have been a slew of revelations about the safety of the submersible, with plenty coming forward to say they decided not to travel aboard the Titan because they had safety concerns or that they were on board but had a difficult experience.
Former OceanGate employee David Lochridge was the company's director of marine operations until 2018 when he brought up concerns about the safety of the sub.
He flagged up a number of issues with the vessel and he's not the only one to have been doubtful about the Titan sub's level of safety.
On a previous trip, Rush downplayed a 'really loud bang' to passengers in the hopes of reassuring their nerves before they boarded, telling them 'almost every deep-sea sub makes a noise at some point'.
There was also a 2021 expedition which ran into difficulty when a battery stopped working, with videographer Jaden Pan saying they were close to the wreckage of the Titanic when the difficulty occurred.
He said Rush told them the sub would have to surface because a battery had failed, and said the OceanGate CEO told passengers to 'sleep' as it would take 24 hours to get back to the surface.
The investigation into how the Titan sub failed and led to the deaths of all on board continues.
Joe Harker