OceanGate employee pushes back against idea of 'desperation' to complete missions

WASHINGTON — A key employee with the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic pushed back at a question from a Coast Guard investigator about whether OceanGate felt a sense of “desperation” to complete the dives because of the high price tag.

“Not a desperation, there definitely was an urgency to delivery on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal,” said Amber Bay, director of administration for the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible. She insisted the company would not “conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need."

Other witnesses have characterized those who paid $250,000 to participate in OceanGate voyages to the Titanic as passengers, but Bay described them more as explorers who were invited to take an active role in the missions. “These were the people we were looking for. Explorers. Adventurers,” Bay testified Tuesday.

OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023.

The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

The co-founder of the company told the Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.

Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster. “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,” Sohnlein said.

Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. “The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Sohnlein said Monday he had the opportunity to dive in Titan “many times” and he declined. He said his reasons included not wanting to take space away from potential customers. He also said when Rush reached a point when it was “time to put a human in there,” he wanted to do it himself. Rush felt it was his design and said “if anything happens, I want it to impact me,” Sohnlein said.

But Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a troubled company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.