The pressure is on.
An Ohio billionaire is gearing up for a deep-sea submersible mission to the depths of the Titanic to demonstrate improved safety in the industry following the tragic implosion of the OceanGate vessel last year.
Larry Connor, a real estate investor from Dayton, announced that he and Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey will descend over 12,400 feet (2.3 miles) to the Titanic wreck site in a two-person submersible.
“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal.
Lahey has developed a $20 million vessel named the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, which Connor asserts can safely and repeatedly undertake this deep-sea voyage.
“Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Connor said. “You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
The pair aims to prove that such a journey can be executed safely, in contrast to the disastrous implosion of the Titan submersible in June, which resulted in the deaths of all five aboard, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
The Titan was en route to the Titanic site when it experienced a “catastrophic implosion” on June 18.
Shortly after the incident, Connor contacted Lahey, urging him to develop a superior submersible. “[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,” Lahey recounted to the paper.
Connor did not specify when their voyage would take place.
Lahey, a critic within the deep-sea adventure industry, had previously accused OceanGate of having questionable safety standards, describing Rush’s approach as “quite predatory.”
Industry experts and a whistleblowing employee had earlier raised concerns about the safety of the Titan, partly because OceanGate chose not to certify it through reputable safety organizations like the American Bureau of Shipping and Det Norske Veritas in Europe.
Rush, billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood along with his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman, perished instantly when the Titan imploded under the immense pressure of the Atlantic Ocean.
