The company that was the owner of the tragic Titan submarine has suspended its business operations, according to a statement on its website.
After the sub sank last month while en route to the Titanic’s submerged remains off the coast of Canada, OceanGate said that it had “suspended all exploration and commercial operations.”
Hamish Harding, a British citizen, and Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, a father and son, were also killed, making a total of five people on board.
CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush, and the submersible’s pilot, French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet also died in the incident.
The US-company based in Washington announced the development via a banner on the homepage of its website.
OceanGate was founded in 2009 and offered tourists the chance to travel on submersibles into the depths of the ocean to see shipwrecks and underwater canyons up close.
Following the Titan tragedy, there has been widespread criticism of the unsafe nature of the sub.
Authorities are also investigating the cause of its collapse, which has raised concerns about the regulation surrounding such deep-sea voyages.
The vessel was first reported missing on June 18 and then four days later the US Coast Guard confirmed it had been destroyed by a ‘catastrophic implosion’.
Presumed human remains were recovered from the wreckage, as well as the debris of the sub itself, last week.
Former OceanGate employee David Lochridge had previously told a colleague he was worried Mr Rush would get himself and others killed.
Mr Lochridge, formerly OceanGate’s director of marine operations who worked at the company until 2018, was fired after raising concerns about the safety of the ill-fated Titan for much of its building process.
Those warnings were allegedly delivered from the factory floor but were constantly dismissed, it is claimed.
It has now emerged that Lochridge emailed project associate Rob McCallum – who also left OceanGate over safety concerns – shortly after he was fired in 2018.
In a series of messages he said he was worried CEO Stockton Rush would end up dead on the submersible.
The New Yorker claims Lochridge said in an email: ‘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.
The engineer reportedly continued: ‘I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen.’
‘There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive the thing.’