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upstart writes:

OceanGate ramps up the research for its second deep-sea expedition to the Titanic:

One year after OceanGate's first expedition to the Titanic shipwreck, the Everett, Wash.-based company is gearing up for its second annual set of dives starting next week — and this time, science will be at center stage.

Last summer's expedition kicked off what's intended to be a yearly series of visits to the 110-year-old ruin, nearly 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. As any movie fan knows, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank during its first voyage from England to New York in 1912, causing more than 1,500 deaths.

The shipwreck was rediscovered in 1985, and there's been a string of crewed and robotic surveys since then. But OceanGate's plan is different. The 13-year-old company and its research partners aim to document how the rapidly deteriorating Titanic and its surroundings are changing on a year-to-year basis — supported by customers who are paying $250,000 each to be part of the adventure.

[...] "One of the ways that we're able to support this kind of scientific research is by finding different ways to fund it," Rush said. "We can take media, as we'll do this year and as we did last year, and film these wrecks and these locations. And we can bring people who are willing to help fund the operation to participate. That gives us a completely different way to fund this, and be able to go back to the Titanic and other sites every year."

[...] This year's expedition begins June 15 [...] is due to wrap up on July 25.

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