Questions only beginning in Titan investigation
For starters, who is in charge?
A day after revelations that the Titan submersible imploded, officials searched the ocean floor for evidence and grappled Friday with vexing questions about who is responsible for investigating the international disaster.
A formal inquiry has not yet been launched because maritime agencies are still busy searching the area where the vessel fell apart, the US Coast Guard said Friday. Debris was located about 12,500 feet underwater, several hundred feet away from the Titanic wreckage it was on its way to explore. The US Coast Guard led the initial search and rescue mission.
“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now,” Rear Admiral John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District said Thursday.
It was not entirely clear Friday who would have the authority to lead what is sure to be a complex investigation involving several countries. OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the United States but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. OceanGate is based in Everett, Wash., but closed when the Titan was found. Meanwhile, the Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada, and the people on board the submersible were from England, Pakistan, France, and the United States.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that the US Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a “major marine casualty” and the Coast Guard will lead the investigation. NTSB spokesperson Peter Knudson said that information was provided to the agency’s senior management by Coast Guard officials, and the NTSB has joined the investigation.
The Coast Guard has not confirmed that it will lead the investigation. Coast Guard headquarters said the Coast Guard First District in Boston will discuss future operations and plans, but did not say when. The First District did not respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking comment Friday.
How the investigation will proceed is also complicated by the fact that the world of deepsea exploration is not well-regulated. Deep-sea expeditions like those offered by OceanGate are scrutinized less than the companies that launch people into space, noted Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy.
The Titan was not registered as a US vessel or with international agencies that regulate safety. And it wasn’t classified by a maritime industry group that sets standards on matters such as hull construction.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the Titan when it imploded, complained that regulations can stifle progress.
“Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” Rush wrote in a blog post on his company’s website.
Bob Ballard, a member of the research team that found the Titanic wreck in 1985, called the lack of certification by outside experts “the smoking gun” in the Titan implosion.
“We’ve made thousands and thousands and thousands of dives ... to these depths and have never had an incident,” Ballard said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“... The smoking gun is that this is the first time by a submarine that wasn’t classed,” he said.
The Titan launched at 8 a.m. Sunday, and was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Rescuers rushed ships, planes, and other equipment to the site of the disappearance. Any sliver of hope that remained for finding the crew alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of air was expected to run out and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly 1,600 feet from the Titanic.
“The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Mauger said.
A flurry of lawsuits is expected, but filing them will be complex and it’s unclear how successful they will be. Plaintiffs will run into the problem of establishing jurisdiction, which could be tricky, just as it will be for the investigation, said Steve Flynn, a retired Coast Guard officer and director of Northeastern University’s Global Resilience Institute.
The implosion happened “basically in a regulatory no man’s land,” Flynn said.
“There was essentially no oversight,” Flynn said. “To some extent, they leveraged the murkiness of jurisdiction to not have oversight.”