Canadian officials raised concerns, but OceanGate’s Titan submersible didn’t see proper oversight: TSB

New video released by the U.S. Coast Guard may have captured the moment the Titan submersible imploded off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.

A representative from Fisheries and Oceans Canada raised concerns about OceanGate’s Titan submersible almost two years before it fatally imploded near the Titanic wreck site, according to a report by the Transportation Safety Board.

A DFO representative, who boarded the Horizon Arctic in July 2021 to observe one of the submersible’s first of many expeditions in Canadian waters, raised concerns that the Titan had not been certified by any regulatory body, was built using a carbon fibre material that was not routine for similar expeditions and found that OceanGate was not carrying insurance.

But there’s no evidence those concerns were ever shown to key decision makers at Transport Canada, who ultimately would have been responsible for regulating the Titan submersible, according to TSB investigators.

The TSB report into the Titan implosion, released Wednesday, concluded the Titan submersible “received no oversight” from federal regulators at Transport Canada.

That is despite extensive contacts between OceanGate officials and various other federal departments — including DFO, CBSA and Parks Canada.

“When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dots,” wrote TSB Chair Yoan Marier in a news release.

“Without a complete picture of the operation, the Titan continued to operate in Canada without regulatory oversight.”

Many Canadian missions

Transport Canada did have internal discussions about the Titan’s operations, but the TSB found no evidence that Transport Canada’s Marine Safety and Security division approached OceanGate or Horizon Maritime — a Newfoundland-based company that was hauling the Titan and its launch platform out to sites.

Horizon Maritime worked for years with OceanGate, using its Horizon Arctic and then Polar Prince vessels to haul the Titan submersible and its launch platform to test sites or towards the Titanic wreck, according to the report. The TSB compiled 27 dives between June 2021 and June 2023 where the two organizations worked together.

The board’s report also focused on manufacturing and testing flaws in the Titan submersible, concluding officials at OceanGate did not know whether their Titan submersible was safe to use before it’s fatal 2023 implosion.

Investigators with the TSB wrote in a report that Titan’s carbon fibre cylinder did not receive proper real-world testing, and safety mechanisms that OceanGate relied upon — like an acoustic monitoring system — had similarly not been comprehensively tested.

Testing by TSB investigators revealed that Titan’s carbon fibre hull likely degraded throughout the submersible’s dives. It was also significantly weaker than the “theoretical values” OceanGate relied on.

“A defect-free carbon fibre cylinder of the Titan’s design that met all of the properties set out by the carbon fibre manufacturer was unlikely to have failed at depths equivalent to that of the Titanic,” the TSB wrote.

“Some of the processes used in the manufacturing of the cylinder may have allowed defects to be introduced into the pressure hull…the process of grinding down the raised areas of the cylinder to make them flush with its design curvature potentially introduced defects on the surface of the cylinder.”

Insufficient testing: TSB

TSB investigators wrote in their report that decision makers at OceanGate did not perform real-world strength and stiffness tests on the material used in the Titan submersible’s hull — despite a request from a contractor, who was analyzing the carbon-fibre cylinder, to have the material tested.

“Normal engineering practice would be to expose full-scale models of the pressure hull to a very significant number (hundreds, possibly thousands) of test cycles, at representative pressures and loads, either in the ocean or at a test facility,” the TSB wrote. “However, such an extensive test program was not completed for the Titan.”

The company also did not completely test and model for “ply waviness,” a weakness that had caused failures in its small-scale models, wrote investigators.

According to findings by the TSB, OceanGate had developed a system to monitor for problems inside Titan’s hull, but the company’s analysis of that data was “inconsistent.”

It’s likely the Titan hull was damaged during transport to St. John’s, and its overwinter storage in St. John’s — where it was stored outside between July 2022 and February 2023, according to the TSB.

There is some indication, according to TSB investigators, that Titan’s operators were attempting to slow down the vessel immediately before its implosion near the Titanic site.

The TSB wrote that it’s not possible to “conclusively determine” where the failure point was on the Titan, given not all the debris could be recovered. TSB investigators said, however, evidence suggests the carbon fibre hull was the “likeliest point of failure.”