10 Shocking New Revelations About the Oceangate Titan Submersible Disaster

10 Shocking New Revelations About the OceanGate Titan Submersible Disaster

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today were looking at the US Coast Guards latest report into the 2023 Titan submersible implosion, and whether the disaster was preventable.

Regulatory Confusion

One of the things the Coast Guard wanted to clarify was why regulators didnt intervene, and whether there are places regulations could be improved to prevent something like this from happening again. It turns out that the answer to that question is yes and no; they did identify places where better regulations could be in place going forward, but also determined that OceanGate frustrated regulators on purpose. The report notes in its opening summary, and we quote, By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate was ultimately able to operate TITAN completely outside of the established deep-sea protocol, end quote. Avoiding regulation was the companys entire goal.

OSHAs Missed Opportunity

Not only did OceanGate WANT to avoid regulators, but it was successful in doing so. OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the US, WAS given a complaint in February 2018 from ex-employee David Lochridge. And while OSHA did attempt to refer this to the US Coast Guard, communication was poor and a real investigation was not launched. Because of this, the regulators who were meant to be responsible for preventing things like this though, crucially, nothing like this had ever happened before didnt coordinate with each other and didnt investigate OceanGate despite whistleblowers trying to save lives. The reason for this? A backlog of cases at OSHA.

Money Was More Important

In the lead-up to the fatal Dive 88, OceanGates financial situation was growing more and more tenuous. Adverse weather and issues with Titan regularly led to expeditions being cancelled or delayed for as long as a year, waiting for the following summer, which led to many paying mission specialists demanding refunds. The company did NOT issue these refunds and also did not disclose that Titan had any problems, misrepresenting how safe it was. Why? Money, obviously. Mission specialists also werent shown that infamous waiver until after theyd already paid, and sometimes not until the dive was about to be carried out. According to the Coast Guard, this was intentional to pressure [them] into signing.

Safety Protocols Werent Followed

Were not talking about normal safety protocols any properly classed and registered vehicle has to follow, which OceanGate obviously ignored. Were talking about the companys own internal safety protocols, which ALSO werent followed. This was described by the Coast Guard report as a toxic safety culture. The report says that employees within OceanGate were belittled for raising issues. Many documentaries released in the aftermath have featured interviews with former employees, many of whom were fired like David Lochridge or quit, like Emily Hammermeister and Bonnie Carl. In one chilling example cited by the Coast Guard, the reason Titan used only four bolts to attach the dome was that it was quicker; thats despite the design requiring eighteen.

Inexperienced Employees

The result of the non-stop firings and departures of experienced employees was that OceanGate ended up being staffed by young, inexperienced engineers. Thats not to say they werent knowledgeable, competent, or good at their jobs, but you cant buy experience, and anybody who objected to Rushs company-wide decisions found themselves on the chopping block. This is again related to the toxic safety culture, since even when those young engineers and professionals DID point out safety problems which many did, lets not forget they were fired or forced out. The ones left were stuck choosing between either keeping their careers or potentially sabotaging themselves, since Rush was also threatening to blackball people who went against him.

The Delays

At 10:47 AM, the Coast Guard says the implosion happened, with the sound traveling all the way through the ocean to the support staff on Polar Prince. Yes, that bang heard in the clip of Wendy Rush reacting didnt come through the equipment, they heard it from outside. But the Coast Guard wasnt notified until 7:10 PM, over eight hours later. This was after Polar Prince had spent hours conducting grid searches for Titan, waiting for it to surface. Now, even if the Coast Guard had been notified immediately, it obviously couldnt have saved anyone; the implosion killed the passengers instantly. But the wreck likely could have been located sooner had the crew realized what must have happened.

Transportation Costs

The big question about Titan has always been, why carbon fiber? Why use an untested material that can catastrophically fail in exactly the situation OceanGate used it in? Well, with the Coast Guard report, it looks like we finally have our answer: the lighter Titan is, the cheaper it is to transport. Yes, Stockton himself made a big deal out of how light carbon fiber is for deep-sea operations, but the real reason was, unsurprisingly, cost-cutting. According to the report, while Rush did also believe that a lighter vessel would have better buoyancy, the cheaper shipping costs were a key factor. Its easy to see why, considering OceanGate was based in Washington, but conducted its operations from St. Johns in Newfoundland.

The Parking Lot

Despite pinching pennies over Titans weight, Stockton still didnt bother to bring Titan back to Washington from eastern Canada in the winter of 2022 to 2023. He didnt even bother to store it properly IN Newfoundland, instead leaving it outdoors in a parking lot in St. Johns. We already knew about this, but the report goes into detail about how OceanGate reached this decision and yes, its because storing it improperly was cheaper. According to the Coast Guard, the quote given to OceanGate to cover Titan was $1750, almost nothing relatively speaking. The reason for all this was a dispute between OceanGate and the Memorial University of Newfoundland, because OceanGate was trying to demand certain tax exemptions from the University.

Towing

Something that hadnt been talked about as much before the report was the way OceanGate chose to transport Titan once it was at sea. Images from before the disaster show Titan being towed behind Polar Prince aboard a platform, which is officially called the Launch and Recovery System, or LARS. But questions were raised by the Coast Guard about why this was done at all, when it would have been possible for OceanGate to charter a ship that was already outfitted to carry a submersible on deck. Towing was actually dangerous, because not only did it mean people couldnt often access Titan, but also, earlier in 2023, the towline got caught in Polar Princes propellers. We still dont really know why this was done.

It Was the Hull

Weve known from the moment the sub disappeared that the carbon fiber hull was almost definitely the cause of the catastrophic failure. Thanks to the Coast Guards investigation, which involved a forensic examination of the recovered wreck, we now know that this was correct: the hull DID fail. Worse, the Real-Time Monitoring system, or RTM, OceanGate used, DID report many anomalies and events ahead of Dive 88 that indicated a failure, but these were simply ignored. The Coast Guard points this out: the RTM worked, it DID measure a delamination acoustically, and had this been heeded and the hull repaired or replaced, the implosion that June could have been avoided.

Let us know in the comments whether youll be reading the US Coast Guard report into the implosion.