Canadian safety officials on Friday opened an investigation into the underwater implosion of a tourist submarine that killed all five people on board while diving to the 100-year-old Titanic wreck, raising questions about the unregulated nature of such expeditions.
A debris field from the Titan submarine was found on the floor of the North Atlantic Thursday by a robotic diving vehicle deployed from a Canadian search vessel, ending an intensive five-day international rescue effort.
Fragments of the Titan, which lost contact with its surface support ship on Sunday about an hour and 45 minutes into its two-hour descent, littered the sea floor about 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the bow of the Titanic wreckage, about 2-1/2 miles (4 km) below the surface , said US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger.
He told reporters Thursday that the wreckage was consistent with a “catastrophic vehicle implosion,” meaning the 22-foot-long vessel eventually collapsed and was crushed under the immense hydrostatic pressure at that depth.
Among the five dead was Stockton Rush, the founder and chief executive of US-based OceanGate Expeditions, which operated the submarine and charged $250,000 per person for a trip on the Titanic. He was piloting that vessel.
The others were British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, 58; Businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, in Pakistan, and his 19-year-old son Suleman, both British citizens; and French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77.
Nargeolet was the leading authority on the Titanic, the British luxury liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912, killing more than 1,500 people on board.
Canada’s Transport Safety Bureau (TSB) said in a statement Friday that it was launching a “safety investigation into the circumstances” of Titan’s operation because its surface support ship, the Polar Prince, was a Canadian-flagged vessel.
To St. John’s, Newfoundland, about 400 miles north of the crash site, a TSB team was dispatched to gather information and conduct interviews, the agency said.
Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate with Rush in 2009, said Rush is “very aware” of the dangers of deep-ocean exploration.
“Stockton was one of the smartest risk managers I’ve ever met,” said Söhnlein, who left the company in 2013 and retained a minority stake. “He was very risk averse.
However, others in the tight-knit community of submersible operators and experts noted that Stockton and his company had decided to forego certification of Titan’s new design from third-party industry parties such as the American Bureau of Shipping.
Some questioned Stockton’s choice of carbon fiber to fabricate his vessel’s critical pressure hull.
“OceanGate built its own experimental vehicle with materials others shunned, chose to bypass a certification process designed to ensure safety, and chose to ignore the warnings of many experts in the submarine community,” said investment manager Ray Dalio, the company’s co-founder. The OceanX initiative for marine exploration, she said in a LinkedIn post on Friday.
British Titanic explorer Dik Barton also pointed to issues with the Titan’s design and maintenance, saying “there were a lot of red flags flying here”.
One would-be Titan passenger, investor Jay Bloom of Las Vegas, told he turned down a last-minute chance to join the ill-fated Titan excursion with his son out of safety concerns.
Bloom, a licensed helicopter pilot, said he was particularly concerned that Stockton was using expendable parts on the Titan, including a video game joystick to control the craft, and was “terrified” by the fact that the submarine would be bolted shut. outside and prevents passengers from getting out on their own in an emergency.
Questions about Titan’s safety were raised in 2018 during a symposium of industry experts and in a lawsuit by the former head of OceanGate’s maritime operations, which was settled later that year.
The disaster marks the first known casualties in more than 60 years of civilian deep-sea exploration. However, OceanGate was allowed to go its own way because international waters are outside of government regulation, according to industry experts.
The company did not address questions about the lack of industry certification or other security issues.
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