OceanGate Co-Founder Testifies in Titan Hearing

Former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge testified last week that the "whole idea" behind OceanGate was making money, but co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein described loftier goals on Monday. "We wanted to give humanity greater access to the ocean, specifically the deep ocean," said Sohnlein, the first witness to testify in the second week of the Coast Guard hearing on the implosion of the Titan submersible.

• Sohnlein said that when he started working with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, they had "no intention of creating our own subs," the BBC reports. He said they started building submersibles because no builder could meet their requirements. Sohnlein testified that carbon fiber was used for the Titan's hull because it was lightweight and inexpensive, adding that it wasn't a "novel idea," the AP reports.
• Roy Thomas, a senior principal engineer at the American Bureau of Shipping, testified Monday that carbon fiber is "susceptible to fatigue failure under repeated external pressurization."

• Sohnlein said he left the company in early 2013, more than 10 years before the implosion killed Rush and four passengers, because it had switched focus to engineering, which he felt was Rush's specialty. He said he declined an offer to stay on in a reduced role for a salary of $120,000. Sohnlein said he always declined Rush's offers to go on dives. "As a shareholder I never wanted to take up room on the dive," he said.
• "This was not supposed to happen, this should not have happened," he said of the disaster, per the BBC. "I don't know if we'll ever know the answers to all of this," he said of the causes of the tragedy. This can't be the end of deep ocean exploration," he said. "This can't be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don't believe that it will be."

The hearing is expected to conclude Friday, the Washington Post reports. The Marine Board of Investigation's subsequent public report could lead to new regulations on deep-sea diving—as well as possible criminal charges. (More Titan submersible stories.)