The name of Guillermo Söhnlein has resonated in recent days since the disappearance of the Titan submersible, which offers a tourist expedition to the remains of the Titanic and whose last trip ended in the implosion that cost the lives of five crew members.
Söhnlein co-founded Ocean Gate, the company that operated the submersible trips to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The private company was born in 2009, by the hand of its other founder Stockton Rush, who was aboard the Titan at the time of the implosion.
According to his Facebook profile, Söhnlein was born in Buenos Aires in 1966 and emigrated to the United States in 1972. He settled in San José, California, where he studied economics and law.
The Argentine-American withdrew from Ocean Gate in 2013 for unspecified reasons, according to his profile. LinkedInin which he describes himself as an “independent consultant and social entrepreneur, focused on innovation, international business, and the exploration and sustainable settlement of extreme environments.”
He is currently CEO of Fortivo Music and Humans2Venus, a private company focused on establishing a permanent human presence on Venus.
THIS HE SAID ABOUT THE TRAGEDY OF THE TITAN
Söhnlein today rejected some criticism of the company’s security, considering that these people do not have “all the information” to be able to comment.
Speaking to British broadcaster BBC Radio 4Söhnlein, an American of Argentine origin, who said that those who comment on issues related to the safety conditions of the wrecked Titan submersible are not “fully informed.”
“People keep equating certification with safety and ignore 14 years of development on the Titan submersible,” he lamented.
According to him, “any expert weighing this, including (director James) Cameron, will also concede that they weren’t there when the sub was designed, during the sub’s engineering process, during the sub’s construction, and certainly not when the sub was built.” the rigorous testing program to which the sub was subjected was carried out.”
Söhnlein considered that what happened had meant “a tragic loss for the ocean exploration community” although he pointed out that anyone who works in the ocean “knows the risk of operating under such pressure and knows that at a certain moment they are at risk of suffering a implosion of this kind.
