French man with Conn. ties among five on missing submersible
KENT — A French diver with ties to Connecticut is among the five people on a submersible vessel that disappeared Sunday during a tour of the Titanic shipwreck site.
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, is the underwater research program director for RMS Titanic, Inc. — a company whose mission is to preserve the legacy of the Titanic and has conducted eight research expeditions to the wreckage site since 1987 — and has lived in South Kent for several years, according to the Kent Library Association Board, of which he’s been a member since 2015. He has also lived in Greenwich.
He was on a tour of the Titanic with private research and tourism company OceanGate Expeditions when the submersible vessel he was on vanished off the coast of southeastern Canada Sunday morning.
A Coast Guard search commenced after the vessel lost contact with the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince during a dive 900 miles east of Cape Cod. Nargeolet is on board the vessel with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, wealthy British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood.
Rescuers estimate as of Tuesday that the five passengers have two days of oxygen left on the vessel.
Nargeolet is no stranger to exploring the Titanic wreckage. He’s led several expeditions to the Titanic and at least 30 submersible dives, salvaging more than 5,500 artifacts from the debris field near the wreck.
“I wonder, why are people so fascinated with the Titanic after a century?” Nargeolet said in a 2012 interview with Hearst Connecticut Media. “I think everyone can find something they like in it. Onboard, there were rich people, poor people and immigrants coming to North America pursuing a dream.”
After serving more than 20 years in the French Navy, he joined the French Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea and was in charge of deep submersibles, as well as the institute’s technical research office, according to his profile on the Kent Library Association Board webpage.
Nargeolet has been RMS Titanic, Inc.’s director of underwater research since 2007, according to his LinkedIn page. work, including a $523,000 “success” or reward fee.
Had the case proceeded to a hearing, the state said it was ready to prove that Juan should have registered and filed appropriate reports for his paid efforts in 2017 and 2018 to lobby before the CPA on behalf of his employer.
Seabury Maritime has been in trouble with the Office of State Ethics before.
In May, the firm was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine for undisclosed lobbying before the CPA. Ethics officials alleged that in 2017 and 2019, Seabury spent a total of $17,500 on lobbying before the port authority.
Under state law, lobbyists are required to register with the Office of State Ethics if they spend more than $3,000 each year, and are required to file itemized financial disclosures. State officials claim Seabury didn’t adhere to either of these requirements.
In 2022, the firm was fined $10,000 for providing gifts to employees and a port authority board member in 2017 and 2019, documents show.
A port authority employee was also fined last year for failing to disclose that Seabury gave them a ticket to a National Hockey League playoff game in Boston in May 2019.