Real estate investor Larry Connor confirmed that Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey will go 12,400 feet deep to see a shipwreck deep in the sea.

“I want 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,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal.

Lahey has developed a $20 million vessel with the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, which can be taken for a journey repeatedly.

“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 said.

After the OceanGate scandal, Connor urged Lahey to build a better submarine.

“[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,’” Lahey added.

On June 18, 2023, OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded during an expedition to view the Titanic wreckage, killing all five passengers on board.

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