EVERETT, Wash. — Editor's note: The above video originally aired June 22, 2023
The Everett-based company that owned a submersible that fatally imploded on its way to explore the wreck of the Titanic said Thursday it has suspended operations.
OceanGate, a company based in Everett, Washington, owned the Titan submersible that is believed to have imploded as it made its descent on June 18 in the North Atlantic. The implosion killed all five people on board.
The company's website said Thursday that it “has suspended all exploration and commercial operations.”
The Coast Guard is investigating the implosion.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was among five people on the Titan submersible, which lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after it began its journey. British businessman Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, a father and son from a prominent Pakistani family, were also on board.
Several agencies launched an extensive search for the submersible, which covered an area twice the size of Connecticut in waters 2 ½ miles deep.
The Coast Guard said there was a “catastrophic implosion” of the submersible after debris was found about 1,600 feet from the Titanic. A senior Navy official told the Associated Press that the U.S. Navy analyzed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was consistent with an implosion or explosion when communication was lost.
This was the third year that OceanGate has operated expeditions to the Titanic, following trips in 2021 and 2022.
The Titan submersible itself “was not a U.S. flagged vessel and was never certified or certificated by the U.S. Coast Guard,” the Coast Guard has said.
The company took paying customers to see the Titanic’s wreckage at a price tag of $250,000 per person. Its goal is to document flora and fauna living in the wreckage, document the condition of the wreck and capture data and images to be used for scientific study, in addition to adventure tourism.
However, the company faced allegations of safety concerns even before it launched its first Titanic mission. In 2018, a former OceanGate employee sued the company claiming he was wrongfully terminated after he sounded the alarm about the “potential danger to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths."
That case was settled outside court.