29 May 2024 , 09:44
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A property billionaire who is planning to build a new submersible to visit the Titanic wreckage could charge an astonishing £600,000 per dive.
Larry Conner, from Ohio, is in the process of building a £15million two-person submersible to travel 12,400ft to the bottom of the North Atlantic to prove the industry is safe following the implosion of OceanGate's sub. The submarine suffered a catastrophic implosion around an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to the Titanic wreck site last June.
It led to the deaths of OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, British adventurer Hamish Harding, French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. OceanGate, which charged £195,000 to visit the wreckage, suspended all its operations pending an investigation.
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Larry Connor hopes to take his new submarine to the Titanic wreckage (Youtube)It is believed Larry's desire to visit the wreckage is to disprove the theory that the submersible industry is dangerous. “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,” Larry told the .
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The design is by Triton Submarines (Triton Submarines)He is working with Patrick Lahey, an experienced diver and submersible designer, who co-founded Triton Submarines, and intends to make the journey in a £15million Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer. Patrick, who co-founded Triton Submarines in 2008, plans to go with Larry, who is head of The Connor Group, a property investment firm based near Dayton, Ohio.
The pair ventured together in a submersible to the Challenger Deep and the Sirena Deep in the Mariana Trench in 2021. At nearly a whopping 36,000ft, the trench is the deepest point on the Earth’s seabed.
It costs a whopping £15million (Triton Submarines)While it is unclear when they plan to visit the wreckage, a brochure for their company Triton Submarines explains that they offer “exclusive $750,000 (£600,000) per dive trips”. According to the company website, the Triton is the world’s deepest diving acrylic sub, and has “unmatched” capabilities which "couldn't have been built five years ago", according to Larry.
“Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Larry said. “You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
He hopes to disprove the industry is unsafe following the OceanGate implosion (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)The TRITON 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer is a high-performance, flexible platform designed specifically for professional applications, according to the company's website. "Its 4,000-meter depth rating makes it the perfect submersible for repeated trips to the deep ocean", it says.
"The TRITON 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer is the only acrylic-hulled submersible commercially certified for dives in excess of 13,000 ft. Meanwhile, the investigation into OceanGate's "catastrophic" implosion on June 18, 202 is still ongoing.