One of the co-founders of OceanGate Expeditions appeared to be at a loss for words Thursday upon learning that a debris field had been found in the search for the ill-fated Titan submersible that had been en route to the Titanic’s wreckage.
Guillermo Söhnlein co-founded OceanGate in 2009 with Stockton Rush, who was piloting the Titan when it imploded this week. He was giving a televised interview with the BBC as news of the discovery of debris at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean rolled in.
“I’m sorry, some what has been found?” Söhnlein asked.
Once the journalist clarified the situation, the entrepreneur continued: “I’m not sure, obviously, because I’m hearing it for the first time now. But I know our protocol for lost comms is for the pilot to surface the sub. So from the beginning, I always thought that’s probably what Stockton would’ve done.”
Watch footage of Söhnlein’s BBC interview, via the New York Post, below.
The Argentine-born Söhnlein left OceanGate 10 years ago but retains a minority stake in the company. He’s spent much of the latter half of this week defending his former company’s research and design protocols amid the global fallout over the Titan catastrophe that killed Rush and four other passengers.
Of those five victims, Rush has garnered the most scrutiny. Shortly after the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that the Titan had imploded, footage of a 2021 interview in which Rush acknowledged he’d “broken some rules” with regard to the design of the submersible resurfaced in a number of media outlets, including CBS and People, and drew ire online.
In response, Söhnlein has argued that Rush was “one of the most astute risk managers I’d ever met,” telling Reuters: “He was very keenly aware of the risks of operating in the deep ocean environment, and he was very committed to safety.”
He went on to urge the public to refrain from speculating about the cause of the disaster until additional data had been gathered and analyzed.
“There’s going to be a time for [making assessments], and I don’t think right now is the right time to do that,” he said.