Tuesday marks one year to the day that the OceanGate Titan submersible vanished in the depths of the North Atlantic on an ill-fated mission to the Titanic.
After a five-day search that captured the world's attention, authorities said the vessel had been destroyed and all five people on board had died.
But despite lingering questions about the disaster, thedeadly implosion of the Titan has not dulled the desire for further ocean exploration.
The Georgia-based company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic plans to visit the sunken ocean liner in July using remotely operated vehicles.
And Larry Connor, a real estate billionaire fromOhio, has said he is personally planning a voyage to the shipwreck in a two-person submersible in 2026.
Numerous ocean explorers have declared they are confident undersea exploration can continue safely in a post-Titan world.
'It's been a desire of the scientific community to get down into the ocean,' said Greg Stone, a veteran ocean explorer and friend of Titan operator Stockton Rush, who died in the implosion.
'I have not noticed any difference in the desire to go into the ocean, exploring.'
Thrillseeker Larry Connor is no stranger to risk - he is a private pilot, racing driver and an astronaut
Ohio real-estate investor and businessman, Larry Connor (left) says he is signed up for an expedition to the Titanic. He is pictured with Triton Submarines boss Patrick Lahey after they travelled to more than 20,000ft beneath the ocean surface in another Triton sub
Submersible manufacturer Triton has developed a series of underwater craft (Pictured: the world's smallest, lightest three-person superyacht submersible - TRITON 1650/3 LP)
The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate, imploded on June 18, 2023
Debris from the Titan submersible, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, is unloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John's, Newfoundland, Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Larry Connor, 74, was undeterred by the OceanGate disaster last June - so much so that he was on the phone to a rival firm days after it happened asking it to build a better submersible.
A NASA-certified private astronaut, Mr Connor has no fears about the Triton 4000 submarine he will share with its manufacturer's co-founder Patrick Lahey despite last year's tragedy, which counted three British citizens among the dead.
The businessman is no stranger to chasing adrenaline - he competed in the 2004 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, is a private pilot involved in aerobatic competitions and an experienced submariner, having already explored the Mariana Trench - one of the deepest oceanic trenches on Earth.
He is set on taking the two-person submersible down to the depths 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,' he told theWall Street Journal.
Triton's newly designed underwater exploration vehicle, named the 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer - reportedly costs a cool £15million and will have presumably overcome the presumed flaws that saw the OceanGate Titan implode before it reached the Titanic wreckage.
The Triton 4000 - so named for the depth in metres (13,100ft) it will be capable of diving to - will only be deployed once its manufacturers are certain it can withstand the extreme pressure at such a depth.
'Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago,' Mr Connor said.
Triton's operators point out that their submersible is safer than Titan, which was criticised for having no official safety certification.
Sophie Bentham-Wood, Executive Director of Global Marketing and Sales Strategies for Triton, told MailOnline that the company was contacted by a slew of investors willing to front cash for their operations amid concerns the Titan sub disaster could undermine further deep-sea exploration.
'Some have already approached us to discuss the build of deep-diving submersibles purely to counteract any negative impact those events could have had and maintain momentum in the ocean space,' Bentham-Wood said.
America's super-wealthy are still risking their lives on deep sea adventures even after the catastrophic implosion of OceanGate's Titan last year, that killed all on board (Pictured:next-generation Triton submersible, the Triton 660/9 AVA, called the Scenic Neptune II)
Larry Connor will use the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer to explore the ocean depths. A computer render of the submersible is seen in this image
The Titanic lay largely intact at a depth of 12,000 feet off the coast of St. John's, Newfoundland
Wreckage from the site of the Titanic is seen in this screenshot of footage
Debris from the Titan submersible, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, is unloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John's, Newfoundland, Wednesday, June 28, 2023
OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush, who died aboard the Titan
Triton has built a range of submersible craft for deep sea exploration
In the weeks after the Titan disaster, concerns were raised about whether the craft was destined for failure because of its unconventional design - and its creator's refusal to submit to independent checks that are standard in the industry.
The US Coast Guard quickly convened a high-level investigation into what happened, but officials said the inquiry is taking longer than the initial 12-month time frame, and a planned public hearing to discuss their findings won't happen for at least another two months.
OceanGate, a company co-founded by Rush that owned the submersible, suspended operations in early July just weeks after the Titan disappeared. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment.
David Concannon, a former adviser to OceanGate, said he will mark the anniversary privately with a group of people who were involved with the company or the submersible's expeditions over the years, including scientists, volunteers and mission specialists.
Many of them, including those who were on the Titan support ship Polar Prince, have not been interviewed by the Coast Guard, he said.
'The fact is, they are isolated and in a liminal space,' he said in an email last week. 'Stockton Rush has been vilified and so has everyone associated with OceanGate. I wasn't even there and I have gotten death threats. We support each other and just wait to be interviewed.
'The world has moved on... but the families and those most affected are still living with this tragedy every day.'
The Titan had been chronicling the Titanic's decay and the underwater ecosystem around the sunken ocean liner in yearly voyages since 2021.
The craft made its last dive on June 18, 2023, a Sunday morning, and lost contact with its support vessel about two hours later.
When it was reported overdue that afternoon, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the area, about 435 miles south of St. John's, Newfoundland.
The US Navy notified the Coast Guard that day of an anomaly in its acoustic data that was 'consistent with an implosion or explosion' at the time communications between the Polar Prince and the Titan were lost, a senior Navy official later told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive technology.
Any sliver of hope that remained for finding the crew alive was wiped away on June 22, when the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found near the Titanic on the ocean floor.
Authorities have since recovered the submersible's intact endcap, debris and presumed human remains from the site.
In addition to Rush, the implosion killed two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Harding and Nargeolet were members of The Explorers Club, a professional society dedicated to research, exploration and resource conservation.
The Titan craft made its last dive on June 18, 2023, a Sunday morning, and lost contact with its support vessel about two hours later
FILE - The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, April 10, 1912, on her maiden voyage
The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate
'Then, as now, it hit us on a personal level very deeply,' the group's president, Richard Garriott, said in an interview last week.
'We knew not only all the people involved, but even all the previous divers, support teams, people working on all these vessels - those were all either members of this club or well within our network.'
Garriott believes even if the Titan hadn't imploded, the correct rescue equipment didn't get to the site fast enough.
The tragedy caught everyone from the Coast Guard to the ships on site off guard, underscoring the importance of developing detailed search and rescue plans ahead of any expedition, he said.
His organisation has since created a task force to help others do just that.
'That's what we've been trying to really correct, to make sure that we know exactly who to call and exactly what materials need to be mustered,' he said.
Garriott believes the world is in a new golden age of exploration thanks to technological advances that have opened frontiers and provided new tools to more thoroughly study already visited places. The Titanic tragedy hasn't tarnished that, he said.
Veteran deep-sea explorer Katy Croff Bell agrees.
The Titan implosion reinforced the importance of following industry standards and performing rigorous testing, but in the industry as a whole, 'the safety track record for this has been very good for several decades,' said Bell, president of Ocean Discovery League, a nonprofit organisation focused on making deep-sea investigation less expensive and more accessible.
Garriott said there will be a remembrance celebration for the Titan victims this week in Portugal at the annual Global Exploration Summit.
'Progress continues,' he said. 'I actually feel very comfortable and confident that we will now be able to proceed.'
