The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS 

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

OCEANGATE, the world’s leading manned submersible operation, has successfully completed a 4,000 metre dive in waters off Abaco.

The Washington-based operation whose chief executive officer and co-founder, Stockton Rush, has hinted at plans to establish a secondary facility in this country, hit the milestone in the company’s final test-dive of its five-person Titan submersible ahead of its “Titanic Survey Expedition” scheduled for 2019.

The 4,000 metre depth mark is identical to the wreck site for the famed Titanic ocean-liner which sank in the North Atlantic in 1912. “This deep dive is a major milestone for OceanGate,” Mr Rush said in a press release issued last week.

He added: “It validates our innovative engineering and the repeated use of our carbon fibre and titanium hull. Titan can provide access to half of the world’s ocean depths for up to five people at a time.”

According to Mr Rush, the dive took place on Monday, December 10, about 12 miles east of Little Harbour Cay, Abaco and was the culmination of a testing programme that began in 2016 with pressure tests of a scale model.

The development efforts included testing in Puget Sound, with 20 shallow manned dives, followed by uncrewed dives in The Bahamas this past June to test the pressure hall.

The dive took a total of seven hours, according to OceanGate’s statement, as it included multiple pauses during the descent to assess the integrity of the hull.

“The system uses acoustic sensors to detect sounds emitted by the carbon fibre material as it responds to the external pressure, and also employs strain gauges to measure the physical deflection,” the statement added.

The Titanic Expedition had originally been scheduled for a 2018 launch, but was pushed back to 2019 after lightning damaged electronic components of the Titan.

OceanGate hopes to conduct the first manned-expeditions to the Titanic since the 2012.

The Titan has been tested in several bodies of water in recent months. Back in February, Mr Rush in an interview with The Tribune said the company, in less than 30 days, completed expeditions in the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic.

Mr Rush said the ideal waters of the Bahamas ultimately proved to be the best testing ground. “Much of what we do was always in line of discovery, deep water discovery. When one thinks water, deep pristine and beautiful waters, you think the islands of The Bahamas,” he said.

“The way we are designing our vessels now, is to push the limits on what is possible, and considering our successes here in The Bahamas, it hard not to consider The Bahamas as a place to do just that.”