OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein told a Coast Guard hearing Monday that the Titan submersible disaster “was not supposed to happen.”

The co-founder of OceanGate says buying submarines from larger, certified companies was not an affordable option for their vision in making deep sea exploration accessible to the public. Guillermo Söhnlein testified at U.S. Coast Guard hearings into the Titan disaster today.

Titan submersible company co-founder says disaster 'can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration.'

The man who co-founded OceanGate alongside Stockton Rush will testify during week two of the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the Titan disaster. Guillermo Söhnlein teamed up with Rush to launch OceanGate in 2009. He left the company in 2013 to pursue other opportunities related to deep-sea exploration, but retained a minority stake.

OceanGate's co-founder tells a hearing thatdetails of the Titan implosion may never be known:::: Guillermo Sohnlein, OceanGate co-founder"As I think back through everything that's happened over the last year,

The CEO of OceanGate, who died on the Titan submersible last year, had told his employees that he believed in its ‘safe’ design.

A Coast Guard panel that’s investigating the Titan submersible disaster is in its second week of testimony. Previous witnesses provided testimony that raised serious questions about whether warning signs were ignored.