A mission specialist for the company that owned the Titan submersible that imploded last year told the U.S. Coast Guard on Thursday that the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to “make dreams come true.”
Renata Rojas was the latest person to testify who was connected to Titan owner OceanGate. An investigatory panel had previously listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.
Rojas’s testimony struck a different tone than some of the earlier witnesses, who described the company as troubled from the top down and focused more on profit than science or safety.
“I was learning a lot and working with amazing people,” Rojas said. “Some of those people are very hard working individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.”
Rojas also said she felt the company was sufficiently transparent during the run-up to the Titanic dive. Her testimony was emotional at times, with the coast guard panel proposing a brief break at one point so she could collect herself.
“I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation,” she said.
The U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation this week released video gathered by remotely operated underwater vehicles of the ill-fated Titan submersible that exploded on the way to the Titanic wreck last summer. A two-week hearing into the expedition in which five people aboard were killed is underway in South Carolina.
Earlier this month, the coast guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on problems the company had prior to the fatal 2023 dive.
During 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.”
Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come and resume next week.
Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
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 the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.
Tony Nissen was the first witness at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board Investigation, which aims to learn more about the Titan’s implosion near the wreck of the Titanic. Nissen told the hearing on Monday of several concerns he had with Titan, which were downplayed by OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush. The CBC’s Heather Gillis reports.
When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 700 kilometres south of St. John’s. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 300 metres 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. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.
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