Questions about the safety of scuba diving on the bathyscaphe Titan, which the American company OceanGate Expeditions used for expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic, arose at least in 2018, remember Reuters. According to the latest data, the submersible was destroyed by implosion – an inward-directed explosion that occurs at great depths under water pressure due to structural damage.
Some industry experts began to worry about the Titan’s safe operation in 2018. They were bothered by OceanGate Expeditions’ decision to circumvent the established industry process to certify the design, manufacture and submarine trials. The company has certified the Titan through “third parties”:
the American Bureau of Shipping, the leading classifier of submarines, the European DNV Group, an independent quality assurance and risk management company that sets standards for the design safety of submersibles.
In late March 2018, Will Kohnen, chair of the Marine Technology Society’s (MTS) Manned Underwater Vehicle Panel, sent a letter to OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush (who piloted the Titan during of the last expedition and died with the others). Afterwards, Konen said that in this letter he expressed the concern of expert circles about the security of the Titan, and then had a personal conversation with Rush. According to him, it was “a frank conversation of adults”, during which they failed to reach a consensus.
Konen explained that the problem was not related to any particular design flaw on the Titan, but to OceanGate’s “experimental approach”. MTS experts speculated that other commercial players might follow suit and that certification by “third parties”, including independent companies, would become a mass phenomenon in the industry.
“Titan” is a submersible with a length of 6.7 meters. The OceanGate Expeditions website says he made his first dive to a depth of 4,000 meters in December 2018, and the first expedition to the remains of the Titanic at a depth of 3,800 meters – in 2021. In 2023 he was planned to make 18 such dives.
According to Konen, OceanGate removed legal claims in a simple way – it informed its customers in advance of the “experimental nature” of its bathyscaphe and removed the appropriate receipts from them.
This hypothesis is confirmed by the November report of CBS News, which sent its correspondent on an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic. The reporter said that before starting the trip, he had to sign a waiver form. He said the Titan was an “experimental submersible that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory authority”, so diving on it could result in “bodily injury, emotional harm or death”.
Doubts about the security of the Titan have also surfaced within OceanGate itself. In early 2018, his employee David Lochridge sent a self-authored technical report to management in which he criticized the research and development process for the offshore vehicle. In particular, Lochridge was concerned about the materials used in the manufacture of the hull and the lack of testing of this hull to measure its ability to withstand high pressures at depth.
The day after the report was filed, OceanGate called a meeting to discuss Loughridge’s concerns. Following this meeting, he said he could not endorse the company’s design decisions and allow any crewed diving of the Titan without further testing.
As a result, Lochridge was fired, and in the summer of 2018 OceanGate sued him, accusing him of discussing confidential company information with strangers. Lochridge quickly filed a countersuit, claiming his former employer was trying to intimidate him to prevent his quality control and safety issues with the submersible being “threatened to the lives of innocent passengers” from being exposed. The case did not reach the hearing, as the parties settled their mutual claims out of court.
Experienced underwater explorer J. Michael Harris, who himself dived several times in the wreckage of the Titanic, said in an interview with Fox News that in about two and a half hours, the Titan descended to a “incredible depth” (communication with the bathyscaphe was lost after 1 hour and 45 minutes after the start of the dive). Given the water pressure at the bottom where the Titanic sank, we’re talking about a “very dangerous environment,” Harris explained.
“More people have been in outer space than in these depths of the ocean. Here you have to do everything absolutely perfectly and according to the instructions. past two years doesn’t look good,” he concluded.
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