Q&A of the Day – OceanGate Catastrophe – Who Regulates Subs?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Are there any regulations for commercial subs or are people just taking a leap of faith by getting on these subs?
Bottom Line: There were no survivors in the tragic OceanGate exploration, as an apparent implosion of the vessel took place as the submersible made its way down towards the Titanic. In the lead up to yesterday’s discovery a lot of additional information about the CEO, the company and the industry has surfaced. Much of it, especially pertaining to the CEO, appears to have been an ominous precursor to what we’ve seen play out. As I mentioned in my takeaways yesterday, in a 2020 Zoom interview that hasn’t aged well, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said this: When I started the business, one of the things you'll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old White guys. I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational, a 25-year-old, you know, who's a subpilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational, So we've really tried to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we're doing things that are completely new.
I’d imagine that if you ask most people who’re flying if they’d prefer an experienced pilot or an inspirational one, most people will opt for the experience...that the CEO evidently didn’t isn’t encouraging. But that’s far from the only piece of potentially relevant info we’ve come to learn over the past couple of days. In another interview with Smithsonian Magazine, granted by Rush, when asked about regulations he said: It's obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn't innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations. And those regulations he was speaking of are derived from the 1993 Passenger Vessel Safety Act. When asked about the law he said: The safety standards are: “understandable but illogical”. And that appears to have colored the approach to took to developing Titan.
In 2019, OceanGate said the company met standards “where they apply”. There was information listed on their site which implied the vessel was developed, in part, in a way which escaped many of the regulations put into place with the 1993 law. Given Rush’s overt aversion to regulations this doesn’t come as a surprise. Here’s what the law states pertaining to commercial subs:
- Passenger vessels of at least 100 gross tons carrying not more than 12 passengers.
- Make application for inspection with the local Coast Guard Officer in Charge, Marine Inspection
- Make the vessel available for examination by the Coast Guard
- prior to the carriage of passengers
- Correct especially any hazardous conditions involving the
- vessel's structure, electrical system, and machinery installation
- Equip the vessel with lifesaving and firefighting equipment, or
- the portable equivalent, required for the route and number of persons
- carried
- Verify through stability tests, calculations, or other
- practical means that the vessel's stability is satisfactory for the size, route and number of passengers
- Develop a work plan approved by the Coast Guard to complete in a good faith effort all requirements necessary for issuance of a Certificate of Inspection as soon as practicable.
While the Titan was registered with the Coast Guard, based on my research to date, it appears to have avoided many of the regulations Rush complained about by staying under the weight mandate cited in the law. The use of carbon fiber and titanium led to it sitting well below the weight threshold to be fully regulated. What exactly that may have meant is something which I’m sure will be investigated, however many with related knowledge have stated a sub should never been made with carbon fiber as it’s not as strong as metal and represented a fatal flaw in the construction of the vessel. In reality, the warning signs regarding Rush’s operation and the Titan specifically appeared to have been everywhere. Expedition Unknown’s Josh Gates has explained that he went on a test run with Rush on the Titan and “it didn’t perform well”. As a result, to opted not to do an episode of his show about the Titanic from the Titan. He also intimated that there will be much more than comes out about the quality, or perhaps lack thereof, of the vessel. There was also a 2018 whistleblower report from a company employee warning about the company's operations. And as we’ve come to learn there is even an outstanding lawsuit by a Winter Park couple against OceanGate and the CEO Stockton Rush for a promised trip in 2018 that never happened.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire and while we don’t know the details of what happened evidence points to an irresponsible CEO who attempted to avoid regulations, made questionable personal decisions and consistently overpromised while underdelivering. In the end he paid for those decisions with his life along with those aboard his vessel. It’s a cautionary tale and also one which suggests regulations pertaining to small submersibles probably need to be updated to reflect current technology and processes to attempt to avoid something similar from occurring in the future.