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.'

Last year, five people hoping to view the Titanic wreckage died when their submersible imploded in the Atlantic Ocean. A Coast Guard panel that’s investigating the Titan submersible disaster is in its second week of testimony.

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.

The co-founder of the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic told a Coast Guard panel Monday he hoped the silver lining of the disaster would be that it inspires a renewed interest in exploration,