Titanic submarine tours go on sale for £96,000 - but it's not a holiday

One company in Canada has started selling tickets for a submarine tour of the ship Titanic, for around £96,000 (125,000 US dollars).

But it's not a plain sailing tourist trip for those who want a seat on the sub.

They'll become 'citizen scientists' as part of a scientific research team taking part in a project called the Titanic Survey Expedition.

OceanGate, the company behind the project, hope that by carrying out lots of week-long trips over the course of several years, it will be possible to document the wreckage fully.

The team have said that expeditions will be conducted with great respect for those who lost their lives in the sinking of the Titanic.

OceanGate President Stockton Rush is hoping to make dives to the wreck more common by using his privately-owned five-person submarine, and says that 36 people have already booked in for the first six expeditions.

The submarine being used is called Cyclops and has seating for 5 people

He says he's not looking to turn the Titanic into a tourist site, and money made from the trips will help to secure funding for the survey and its discoveries.

Dive teams will collect images, video, laser scans, and sonar data to help to give a clearer picture of the current condition of the wreck, with the citizen scientists getting involved in every part of the mission.

This data will be used to predict the rate of decay over time and help to document and preserve the historic maritime site.

The current plan is for six trips to be carried out between May to September each year, with nine so-called 'citizen scientists allowed on each expedition.

The eight-day trip will set sail from St. John's in Newfoundland, around 370 miles from the site, with each taking six to eight hours to reach the Titanic site, explore, and return to the surface ship.

Mr Rush hopes the group will also be able to examine some of the 300 sea creatures, including deep-diving sharks, which could be down there.

It's not the only expedition to the Titanic wreckage that is planned. RMS Titanic Inc. which holds the salvage rights for the shipwreck site, is planning its own expedition next June.

It plans to cut into the ship and recover the Marconi wireless telegraph machine that sent out distress calls during the sinking.

But some people have argued that the ship should be left alone, out of respect for the 1,500 people who lost their lives.

The decision over RMS Titanic Inc's mission went to court, with a judge ruling that the telegram machine could be taken out because of its historical and cultural importance, and concerns it could be lost in the decaying wreckage.

The sunken ship, which sits 2.4 miles below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, was carrying an estimated 2,208 people when it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912.