By Kenneth Ikonne
Were these explorers or fun – seeking sightseers? There’s a very thin line between the two endeavors, and the distinction must be kept in view. Do Tony Elumelu and Femi Otedola suddenly become scientific explorationists just because they boarded a sealed tube to go see the wreck of the Titanic on the ocean floor?
I have read posts equating the doomed adventurers with frontier – breaking explorers like Christopher Columbus and the space explorationists; they were clearly not. The Titanic shipwreck had long been located, and the Titan expedition was merely to gratify a rich man’s fantasy.
This was no oceanographic expedition undertaken for purposes of research, it must be remembered! Upon getting to the site of the Titanic shipwreck, these fun seekers were not even going to step out of their submarine tube. How then were they going to add to the body of knowledge?
This was a classic example of extreme tourism gone wrong, and criticisms of extreme tourism will always remain valid! Extreme tourism of this sort by the extreme rich diverts resources that should have been deployed for real scientific expeditions! Queen Isabella of Spain sent Christopher Columbus; she did not set out to discover the new world by herself!
We mourn a human tragedy, and not necessarily a loss to science!
