OCEANGATE has suspended all exploration and commercial operations weeks after the Titan submarine implosion that left CEO Stockton Rush and four other passengers dead.
The sub lost communication during a dive into the Titanic wreck just an hour and 45 minutes after submerging in the North Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland, Canada, on June 18.
OceanGate was at the center of a media firestorm after its submersible remained missing for days while multiple agencies attempted to search thousands of feet under the ocean.
The company touted a pricey $250,000 journey that took a select few 13,000 feet below the surface to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
Adding to the intense drama was the impressive cast of passengers which consisted of Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, successful businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, and French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
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The shocking deaths sparked a conversation about the safety of the journey with multiple passengers sharing horror stories of past expeditions that were plagued with life-threatening issues.
A former finance director of the company said she quit after she was asked to be head pilot on the sub.
"It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting. I could not work for Stockton. I did not trust him," the unnamed former employee told The New Yorker.
David Lochridge, who was OceanGate's former director of marine operations, was allegedly fired after trying to voice similar concerns in 2018.
He said in an email obtained by the outlet: "I don't want to be seen as a tattle tale but I'm so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego."
He claimed that the company retaliated after he flagged concerns over OceanGate's alleged "refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design."
Onlookers have drawn comparisons to the original sins of the Titanic crash, which saw the deaths of an unprecedented 1,500 people after a series of fatal decisions were made.
Director James Cameron, who immortalized the failures of the hyper-rich leaders in his film Titanic, watched in horror as history repeated itself.
"I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result," Cameron told ABC News.
"For us, it's a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded.
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"To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going on all around the world, I think it's just as astonishing. It's really quite surreal."
OceanGate conducted over 14 expeditions and more than 200 dives before suspending operations, according to its website.
