OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein, who left the company a decade before its business model suddenly imploded during a Titanic tour last June, has launched a brand new undersea adventure tour concern called “Blue Marble,” now booking a trip to the bottom of Dean’s Blue Hole, a 663-foot deep sinkhole in the Bahamas that locals call the “Portal to Hell,” NewsNation reports.
Blue Marble’s website sells the excursion as a unique “opportunity to discover the hidden secrets of cave-dwelling species, geological climate history and unique ecosystems.” NewsNation’s article states that the site had previously said that “Locals believe that Dean’s is a portal to hell and the devil himself lurks in the black depths.” They don’t explain why it was on the site “previously” rather than “currently,” but it’s not hard to imagine that Söhnlein might want to downplay any sort of superstitions going into such a hazardous environment, especially considering what happened to his former partner, Stockton Rush, and three of his paying customers plus a tour guide employee.
For now at least Söhnlein does not plan on taking tourists on the excursions as the first few rounds will be strictly for researchers. There’s been no recent update on the status of Söhnlein’s grander ambition to send 1,000 people to live in a floating blimp colony in Venus’s atmosphere by 2050.