OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein testifying in Titan submersible implosion investigation

By Ashley R. Williams, Ray Sanchez, Graham Hurley and Alaa Elassar, CNN

(CNN) — The surviving co-founder of the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible is testifying Monday as a US Coast Guard panel continues to investigate what led to the implosion that killed five people last year.

The Marine Board of Investigation’s two-week hearing began September 16 and resumed Monday with OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein, who with CEO Stockton Rush launched the Washington state-based company that created the experimental 23,000-pound submersible in 2009. Sohnlein left the company in 2013.

Rush, the vessel’s operator, died beneath the North Atlantic Ocean in June 2023 along with four other Titan passengers as it traveled to tour the Titanic’s wreckage.

Sohnlein was not involved in the Titan’s development, CNN previously reported.

Also killed in what authorities concluded was a “catastrophic implosion” were businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood; businessman Hamish Harding; and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

The submersible lost contact with its support vessel, the Polar Prince, an hour and 45 minutes into its dive on June 18, 2023. The wreckage, located several hundred yards from the Titanic, was found on June 22 following an extensive search, according to the Marine Board of Investigation, which is the Coast Guard’s highest level of inquiry.

The accident marked the first time a manned deep-ocean submersible had ever imploded, according to industry experts.

Testimony from last week’s hearings portrayed Sohnlein’s former company and business partner as prioritizing profits over science and safety, while warnings were repeatedly ignored before the Titan’s implosion.

Sohnlein told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last year that safety was always a top priority for OceanGate and Rush, whom he described as a “very strong risk manager” on “CNN This Morning.”

“I believe that he believed that every innovation that he created, whether technologically or within the dive operations, was to both expand the capability of humanity exploring the oceans while also improving the safety of those doing it,” Sohnlein said.

But last week’s testimonies, including one from key witness and former OceanGate director of marine operations David Lochridge, told a different story of Rush and his views on handling the vessel’s safety.

Lochridge, who described the company as one that focused on “making money” and that offered “very little in the way of science,” testified that he had raised safety concerns over OceanGate’s operations in 2018 and that he had “no confidence whatsoever” in how the Titan was built.

“It was all smoke and mirrors,” Lochridge said of how the company from which he was fired in 2018 operated. “All the social media that you see about all these past expeditions. They always had issues with their expeditions.”

On Thursday, a marine scientist who dived as a crew member aboard the Titan on its fourth mission last year, testified that the submersible had suffered a platform malfunction just six days before it imploded.

Steven Ross, who said the Coast Guard did not inspect the Titan in 2021, 2022 or 2023, said the platform malfunction on June 12, which was piloted by Rush, caused the five passengers onboard during that trip to slam into the back of the submersible for at least an hour. The dive was aborted, according to Ross, who said no one was injured.

Others last week testified that Rush, an aerospace engineer, willingly broke rules while operating an experimental submersible that had not undergone thorough testing in an effort to appeal to wealthy tourists and researchers seeking out deep-sea voyages.

Former OceanGate engineering contractor Antonella Wilby testified Friday that her repeated safety concerns about the Titan were ignored, and the submersible’s navigation and acoustic communications systems failed during a 2022 expedition.

“No aspect of the operation seemed safe to me,” said Wilby, who was eventually removed from the communications and navigation teams. “When you answer specific questions with, ‘That’s just what the company founder wants,’ instead of actual design decisions and data and analysis, it was a red flag to me.”

Roy Thomas, a senior principal engineer with the American Bureau of Shipping, and Phil Brooks, a former OceanGate engineering director, are also slated to testify Monday.

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CNN’s Dakin Andone, Cindy Von Quednow, Isabelle Chapman and Curt Devine contributed to this report.