Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
OceanGate’s science ties recalled
Niche tourism didn’t motivate firm or CEO, associates say
When OceanGate’s submersible, known as Titan, imploded beneath the sea sometime last week, it took the lives of a billionaire and his son; two other wealthy passengers who each paid $250,000; and the company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, as they attempted a voyage to view the remains of the Titanic.
But for years before the disaster, OceanGate’s vessels were more than stewards for the ultrarich. They also contributed to scientific expeditions in the company’s native Pacific Northwest and assisted local academic institutions in trips that led to published research.
Joe Gaydos, science director for SeaDoc Society, a marine wildlife organization based in Friday Harbor, Wash., recalled Rush as an ocean lover and a professional who, along with his wife Wendy, cared deeply about local research projects.
“In their hearts, they were scientists,” Gaydos told The Washington Post. “Stockton wanted to make a difference … He wanted to do things that actually made the ocean better.”
OceanGate partnered with SeaDoc Society in 2018 for three projects to study a local species of sea urchin and its kelp-filled ecosystem. As part of that effort, OceanGate lent its Cyclops 1 vessel to researchers from the University of Washington, University of Oregon and University of California at Davis, and Rush piloted many of the dives.
Karly Cohen, who was a graduate student at the University of Washington when she went on one of the 2018 expeditions with Rush, called the trip “the defining moment of her career.” Rush also
was part of a group that gave an educational presentation about the submersibles to local residents of Friday Harbor in-between dives, Cohen said.
For these projects, the company’s submersible traveled to depths of about 950 feet, significantly less deep than when it attempted to reach the Titanic wreck at 12,470 feet deep.
“It was still quite a big operation with a lot of moving parts, and it was really well done. And it couldn’t have been done without the Cyclops,” Gaydos said. “These were the types of projects that people needed to see with their own eyes, not a remote device.”
The trip produced three studies published in ScienceDirect, an academic journal, according to documents reviewed by The Post.
Gary Greene, a marine geologist for Moss Landing Marine Labs, said Stockton and Wendy Rush would let him stay at their home in Seattle before and after expeditions. They wanted to use the Titan craft to help with Greene’s research on submarine canyons, he said.
“We would have long conversations about the ways that Titan and the other submersibles could be used for exploration,” Greene said. “Stockton was interested in the engineering, and Wendy was interested in the science.”
In 2014, OceanGate partnered with the Discovery Channel to film an educational episode about sixgill sharks in Seattle’s Elliott Bay, where the local rapper Macklemore went on a dive with Rush — a portion of which was posted to the company’s YouTube channel. OceanGate had also been partnered with the University of Washington’s physics lab around that time, according to another video on the channel.
Along with scientific expeditions in the Pacific Northwest, OceanGate vessels were used in archaeological missions around North America, according to an archive of its website. In 2010, its submersible explored Catalina Island in California and filmed Cold War-era chambers and marine life. That same year, it partnered with BlueView Technologies to create a 3D model of a sunken 100-year-old steamboat in Canada’s Lake Laberge.
In an Oct. 2022 interview with GeekWire, Rush said that OceanGate’s high-end tourism helped subsidize its deep- sea research, which wasn’t financially sustainable on its own. At the time of the Titan submersible’s final voyage, the company was offering spots on an expedition in New York’s Hudson Canyon to train oceanography researchers.
“We would have long conversations about the ways that Titan and the other submersibles could be used for exploration,”
—Gary Greene, a marine geologist for Moss Landing Marine Labs