A Coast Guard Research Board of the United States concluded on Tuesday that the “inappropriate design” of Titan’s submissible was a main contributing factor in its implosion in 2023 that left five people dead.
The Titan was in a tourist expedition to the remains of Titanic, a British passenger lining that sank in 1912, killing at least 1,500 on board, when he lost contact with his support container during the descent. His remains were found four days later, covering the seabed about 488 meters from the Titanic shipwreck arch.
The implosion was preventable, said the president of the Investigation Board of the United States Coast Guard, said Jason Neubauer, who published a 300 -page report after a two -year investigation.
“There is a need for stronger supervision and clear options for operators who are exploring new concepts outside the existing regulatory framework,” he said in a statement.
A spokesman for the media of Oceangate, the company based in the United States that administered the tourist submersible and suspended all operations after the incident, was not immediately available to comment.
The Board determined that the main contributing factors were the “inappropriate process of design, certification, maintenance and inspection of Oceangate for the Titan.”
He also cited “a toxic culture in the workplace in Oceangate”, an inappropriate regulatory framework for submersibles and other novel ships, and an ineffective process of complainants.
The report added: “For several years before the incident, the intimidation tactics leveraged in Oceangate, the assignments for scientific operations and the company’s favorable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny.”
The Board found that Oceangate could not investigate and address the known helmet anomalies after its Titanic 2022 expedition. He said that the data of the Titan’s real time monitoring system should have been analyzed and acted during that expedition.
He also criticized Oceangate for not properly storing the titan before the Titanic 2023 expedition.
