Billionaire prepares to plunge to Titanic wreck year after OceanGate tragedy

Undeterred by the OceanGate disaster, Larry Connor, a realty investor from Ohio, has announced plans to plunge more than 12,400 feet to the site of Titanic's wreck inside a two-person submersible with Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey.

In June 2023, OceanGate organised an expedition to the Titanic wreck deep under the North Atlantic Ocean with five people aboard its submersible, named Titan.

After an hour and 45 minutes, the submersible was lost and a rescue operation was initiated after the vessel failed to resurface at the scheduled time later that day.

The operation continued for four days, after which it was revealed that the vessel had imploded, killing everyone on board, including Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British businessman, his son Suleman, and Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate.

Despite the tragedy, Connor plans to descend in a deep-sea submersible by Triton in a bid to prove the industry is safer now.

He revealed that he'll be accompanied by the co-founder and CEO of Triton Patrick Lahey.

Connor said he wants to show the world that the ocean can be "wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way."

He explained the $20 million vessel Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer was designed by Lahey and is capable of carrying out multiple trips to the ocean's treacherous depths.

Connor told the Wall Street Journal: "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."

Connor hasn't yet revealed when their expedition will take place.