Latest news with #TitanSubmersible
BBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
BBC News quiz of the week: Which baby names took top spot?
This week saw Donald Trump's oft-threatened tariffs finally come into force, the US Coast Guard publish its report into the Titan submersible disaster, and two women denied an AirBnB booking because they were how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?Quiz collated by Ben Fell. Fancy testing your memory? Try last week's quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.
CBC
3 days ago
- CBC
Voices call for justice, change after release of Titan implosion report
Family, friends, investigators and explorers say they're appalled and heartbroken, and are calling for accountability and justice after the United States Coast Guard released its final report on the implosion of the Titan submersible on Tuesday. The coast guard's Marine Board of Investigation report landed two years after OceanGate's Titan imploded while diving to the site of the Titanic wreck, killing all five people on board. The 335-page document outlines many problems with the company's operation, the integrity of the vessel and what led to the fatal incident in 2023. Hamish Harding, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush were the crew members. The company suspended operations in July 2023. OceanGate spokesperson Christian Hammond told the Associated Press the company has been winding down, and was co-operating with the investigation. 'Not shocked' Harding was the chairman of Action Aviation. The company expressed its outrage over what the report revealed. "We are obviously appalled by the contents of the investigation report, but not shocked," Mark Butler, CEO of Action Aviation, said in a statement to CBC News. "It was very evident from the early stages of the investigation, now confirmed by the published report, that Mr. Rush had been trying to run his company on a shoestring, cutting corners, and paying little attention to basic safety and best practices." Butler took over for Harding after his death. He called Rush and his company's actions "selfish and senseless." Butler said Harding's family have no plans to comment at this time. WATCH | U.S. Coast Guard releases damning report on Titan implosion: U.S. Coast Guard releases damning report 2 years after Titan implosion 2 days ago Two years after the fatal Titan submersible implosion, the United States Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation has released its report on the disaster. As the CBC's Mark Quinn reports, it says the five deaths were completely preventable. The family of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood also weighed in on the report's findings. In a statement to CBC News, the family said the report confirms that "unregulated behaviour, a lack of accountability and a fundamentally flawed design" caused the tragedy. But, it won't bring back what they've lost. "No report can alter the heartbreaking outcome, nor fill the immeasurable void left by two cherished members of our family," the statement reads. The Dawood family also called for regulatory reform within the submersible industry. "We believe that accountability and regulatory change must follow such a catastrophic failure. We hope this tragedy serves as a turning point and one that drives meaningful reform, rigorous safety standards, and effective oversight within the submersible industry," the statement reads. "If Shahzada and Suleman's legacy can be a catalyst for regulatory change that helps prevent such a loss from ever happening again, it will bring us some measure of peace." The Shaheed Suleman Dawood Mosque now stands in St. John's, made possible by a donation from Hussain Dawood, father and grandfather of the deceased. Suleman Dawood was the Titan's youngest passenger. He was 19 years old. 'There were really no checks and balances' The family of renowned French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet also expressed their desire for justice — beyond the report's findings. "We also believe there are more entities legally responsible that weren't focused upon given how egregious OceanGate's conduct was," said Tony Buzzbee, the attorney representing Paul-Henri Nargeolet's estate, in a statement to CBC News. "We look forward now to continuing our efforts in court to obtain justice for the family." Jason Neubauer, chair of the Marine Board of Investigation for Titan implosion, said OceanGate's workplace culture and failure to prioritize safety were key factors in the tragedy. "OceanGate's culture was one of the worst, from a safety perspective, and it stems from a lot of different reasons," Neubauer said in an interview with CBC News. "But the primary was that you had the head of the company, the CEO, serving in so many different roles." In the MBI report, Rush's relationship to the vessel is stated as chief pilot, chief executive officer and secretary of OceanGate's board of directors. "He was a consolidation of power into one individual, and there were really no checks and balances," said Neubauer. If the CEO were still alive, Neubauer said MBI would recommend that a separate criminal investigation be opened for manslaughter. "There was negligence involved there, not only from not complying with any of the regulatory standards and certifications and testing, but also for a failure to maintain the vessel with any standard of care," he said. "There's negligence that would absolutely constitute a referral to the Department of Justice for a separate investigation." Neubauer said the company failed to follow through with safety systems put in place, disregarding safety data, even though "warnings were there" from the 2022 operating season. He also noted his surprise at the level of cost-cutting that occurred in OceanGate's operations. "They downgraded the size of the support vessel so that the Titan had to be towed thousands of miles," said Neubauer. The submersible was also stored outside over the winter in St. John's. "That should have never occurred for a carbon fibre craft that is susceptible to porosity and moisture. Those things stand out," said Neubauer. The future of submersible exploration Larry Daley, Titanic expedition specialist, visited the Titanic wreck in a submersible himself in 2003, and considered Nargeolet a close friend. To him, the report revealed that the tragedy was one that could have been avoided. "I knew in my heart and soul this was going to end poorly," Daley told CBC News. Daley said expeditions to the Titanic should continue, but safety should be a priority. "Exploration is good. It'll keep going on for years. But you got to separate the fame from the fortune," Daley said. "It all comes down to doing it safely and having the right equipment." Neubauer said the Titan, in his view, is a good case for regulatory change at an international level. Involving multiple nations and occurring on the high seas, he says it's one the International Maritime Organization could look at. "In regard to submersible standards right now, they're recommendatory. We're going to recommend that they be mandatory just in case you have a situation like this," he said.
CNN
4 days ago
- General
- CNN
The Coast Guard says the Titan submersible disaster was ‘preventable.' Now the deep-sea industry is looking to the future
FacebookTweetLink A lengthy report released by the US Coast Guard Tuesday identified glaring issues with the Titan submersible and the company that ran it, a little more than two years after five people were killed when the deep-sea craft imploded on its way to the Titanic wreckage. From technical issues to company culture, the over 300-page document detailed the many steps that lead to an epic but 'preventable' disaster and identified valuable lessons that the Coast Guard said could prevent future disasters. The 2023 implosion of the submersible at the bottom of the ocean floor killed all five people on board, including Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate, the company which operated the Titan, and triggered a dayslong international search effort until debris was found. While the report was shocking in its frankness about the mistakes made, industry leader William Kohnen said it 'officializes' longstanding concerns. Kohnen, the president and CEO of HYRDOSPACE Group Inc and a witness in last year's hearings on the Titan submersible, told CNN Tuesday that the issues raised in the report are part of an ongoing conversation in the industry that has existed long before the incident – but is now front and center. As the US Coast Guard's investigation comes to a close, Kohnen, who raised safety concerns to Rush in 2018, reflects on the next steps for a growing industry that caters to both scientific research and ultra-wealthy tourism. The recommendations in Tuesday's report made it clear that better regulations in the submersible industry are essential. 'The two-year investigation has identified multiple contributing factors that led to this tragedy, providing valuable lessons learned to prevent a future occurrence,' Jason Neubauer, the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation chair, said in a statement. The MBI, the US Coast Guard's highest level of inquiry, called on the agency to pursue a new regulation requiring all submersibles in the US to be built and maintained under uniform standards. The report cites 'the lack of comprehensive and effective regulations for the oversight and operation' of submersibles designed or operated in the US. In the Titan's case, the MBI found the 'primary contributing factors' to the implosion were OceanGate's 'inadequate design, certification, maintenance and inspection process,' a Coast Guard release said. Kohnen said the need for comprehensive regulation is something the industry has 'been preaching in the desert for 20 years.' As the submersible industry continues to grow, rules are needed much in the same way rules were made during the creation of freeways, he said. 'By the time you have hundreds of cars, somebody came up with a very simple idea of drawing a line in the middle of the road and saying, look, everybody's going to agree that you drive on either side of the line,' Kohnen said. 'That's really what we need to do here.' 'We're not reinventing the wheel. It's just a matter of scrubbing it, making it better, and then engaging other maritime authorities,' he added. Kohnen also advocated for a third-party certification system for the safety of submersibles and their teams, saying it would help keep standards high across borders. Future paid passengers on submersibles will not understand the risk they are taking if the industry continues without mandating third-party certification or other regulations, Kohnen argued. 'A waiver doesn't work if the person signing it cannot give informed consent,' he said, adding, 'Informed consent is just going to get more complicated for the next two generations, because there's so much technology around how do you make sure that a citizen understands the risk they're taking?' Another glaring problem found in the US Coast Guard's report was the 'toxic workplace culture' at OceanGate, instituted by Rush and his management style. Rush held much of the decision-making power as he filled multiple roles within the company, centralizing his power and avoiding checks and balances from the company's board. 'Overall, the MBI believes Mr. Rush deliberately sidelined OceanGate's Board and did not solicit its collective expertise so he could proceed unchecked with his vision to conduct TITANIC expeditions, regardless of any mounting safety concerns,' the report stated. When asked if the culture issues were isolated to OceanGate or reflect an industry-wide concern, Kohnen said he considers this situation a 'civic dereliction of duty.' 'We teach our younger ones to become leaders and push and believe in what they're doing, but that when you are in a position of high-level leadership, you have a huge responsibility not to create chaos,' he said. 'This is really difficult. And I think OceanGate, at the leadership of Stockton (Rush) – it was a problem, and we communicated that with him.' Five years before the implosion, Kohnen, who was at the time the chair of the Marine Technology Society – a group of leading ocean engineers, scientists, policymakers and educators – wrote a letter to Rush on behalf of about 40 other industry leaders expressing concerns with the safety of the Titan submersible. Rush and Kohnen debated some of the key concerns of the letter on a call. Kohnen ultimately convinced the Oceangate CEO to change some of the language on their website to reflect its experimental status, but felt like the public still wouldn't understand that the safety of the submersible hadn't been verified. 'No one was restricting them from innovating and coming up with new technologies,' Kohnen said, arguing OceanGate had the right to dive the submersible on their own without passengers. But putting at risk others who didn't understand the situation is where they crossed the line, he said. Since the submersible's implosion over two years ago, the industry has spent time reflecting on the importance of nailing down a standard across the board, Kohnen said. 'People are paying attention,' he said. He thinks that another important step is making sure different facets of the industry and maritime authorities are connected to one another and build relationships with one another. Being able to call up a colleague and get their opinions on a situation could potentially save lives, he said. 'This five minute conversation can go a long ways into avoiding some big issues,' Kohnen said. 'So just when we think it seems like too dumb to be a real problem, you find out, no, it is a real problem, and it's not as simple to sort out as it appears.' Kohnen said the industry's annual conference will be hosted in the first international location in its history, with the hope of getting more attendance from countries around the world and to encourage international cooperation in regulations. 'It's made a bit more difficult because these vehicles travel across international boundaries,' he said. 'So it's not enough to have just a local or a national solution. It really needs everyone holding hands here and saying, look, we're going to kind of agree that we're looking at these things the same way.'
CNN
4 days ago
- General
- CNN
The Coast Guard says the Titan submersible disaster was ‘preventable.' Now the deep-sea industry is looking to the future
FacebookTweetLink A lengthy report released by the US Coast Guard Tuesday identified glaring issues with the Titan submersible and the company that ran it, a little more than two years after five people were killed when the deep-sea craft imploded on its way to the Titanic wreckage. From technical issues to company culture, the over 300-page document detailed the many steps that lead to an epic but 'preventable' disaster and identified valuable lessons that the Coast Guard said could prevent future disasters. The 2023 implosion of the submersible at the bottom of the ocean floor killed all five people on board, including Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate, the company which operated the Titan, and triggered a dayslong international search effort until debris was found. While the report was shocking in its frankness about the mistakes made, industry leader William Kohnen said it 'officializes' longstanding concerns. Kohnen, the president and CEO of HYRDOSPACE Group Inc and a witness in last year's hearings on the Titan submersible, told CNN Tuesday that the issues raised in the report are part of an ongoing conversation in the industry that has existed long before the incident – but is now front and center. As the US Coast Guard's investigation comes to a close, Kohnen, who raised safety concerns to Rush in 2018, reflects on the next steps for a growing industry that caters to both scientific research and ultra-wealthy tourism. The recommendations in Tuesday's report made it clear that better regulations in the submersible industry are essential. 'The two-year investigation has identified multiple contributing factors that led to this tragedy, providing valuable lessons learned to prevent a future occurrence,' Jason Neubauer, the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation chair, said in a statement. The MBI, the US Coast Guard's highest level of inquiry, called on the agency to pursue a new regulation requiring all submersibles in the US to be built and maintained under uniform standards. The report cites 'the lack of comprehensive and effective regulations for the oversight and operation' of submersibles designed or operated in the US. In the Titan's case, the MBI found the 'primary contributing factors' to the implosion were OceanGate's 'inadequate design, certification, maintenance and inspection process,' a Coast Guard release said. Kohnen said the need for comprehensive regulation is something the industry has 'been preaching in the desert for 20 years.' As the submersible industry continues to grow, rules are needed much in the same way rules were made during the creation of freeways, he said. 'By the time you have hundreds of cars, somebody came up with a very simple idea of drawing a line in the middle of the road and saying, look, everybody's going to agree that you drive on either side of the line,' Kohnen said. 'That's really what we need to do here.' 'We're not reinventing the wheel. It's just a matter of scrubbing it, making it better, and then engaging other maritime authorities,' he added. Kohnen also advocated for a third-party certification system for the safety of submersibles and their teams, saying it would help keep standards high across borders. Future paid passengers on submersibles will not understand the risk they are taking if the industry continues without mandating third-party certification or other regulations, Kohnen argued. 'A waiver doesn't work if the person signing it cannot give informed consent,' he said, adding, 'Informed consent is just going to get more complicated for the next two generations, because there's so much technology around how do you make sure that a citizen understands the risk they're taking?' Another glaring problem found in the US Coast Guard's report was the 'toxic workplace culture' at OceanGate, instituted by Rush and his management style. Rush held much of the decision-making power as he filled multiple roles within the company, centralizing his power and avoiding checks and balances from the company's board. 'Overall, the MBI believes Mr. Rush deliberately sidelined OceanGate's Board and did not solicit its collective expertise so he could proceed unchecked with his vision to conduct TITANIC expeditions, regardless of any mounting safety concerns,' the report stated. When asked if the culture issues were isolated to OceanGate or reflect an industry-wide concern, Kohnen said he considers this situation a 'civic dereliction of duty.' 'We teach our younger ones to become leaders and push and believe in what they're doing, but that when you are in a position of high-level leadership, you have a huge responsibility not to create chaos,' he said. 'This is really difficult. And I think OceanGate, at the leadership of Stockton (Rush) – it was a problem, and we communicated that with him.' Five years before the implosion, Kohnen, who was at the time the chair of the Marine Technology Society – a group of leading ocean engineers, scientists, policymakers and educators – wrote a letter to Rush on behalf of about 40 other industry leaders expressing concerns with the safety of the Titan submersible. Rush and Kohnen debated some of the key concerns of the letter on a call. Kohnen ultimately convinced the Oceangate CEO to change some of the language on their website to reflect its experimental status, but felt like the public still wouldn't understand that the safety of the submersible hadn't been verified. 'No one was restricting them from innovating and coming up with new technologies,' Kohnen said, arguing OceanGate had the right to dive the submersible on their own without passengers. But putting at risk others who didn't understand the situation is where they crossed the line, he said. Since the submersible's implosion over two years ago, the industry has spent time reflecting on the importance of nailing down a standard across the board, Kohnen said. 'People are paying attention,' he said. He thinks that another important step is making sure different facets of the industry and maritime authorities are connected to one another and build relationships with one another. Being able to call up a colleague and get their opinions on a situation could potentially save lives, he said. 'This five minute conversation can go a long ways into avoiding some big issues,' Kohnen said. 'So just when we think it seems like too dumb to be a real problem, you find out, no, it is a real problem, and it's not as simple to sort out as it appears.' Kohnen said the industry's annual conference will be hosted in the first international location in its history, with the hope of getting more attendance from countries around the world and to encourage international cooperation in regulations. 'It's made a bit more difficult because these vehicles travel across international boundaries,' he said. 'So it's not enough to have just a local or a national solution. It really needs everyone holding hands here and saying, look, we're going to kind of agree that we're looking at these things the same way.'
WIRED
4 days ago
- General
- WIRED
US Coast Guard Report on Titan Submersible Implosion Singles Out OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush
Aug 5, 2025 6:17 PM A report on the death of five people in the Titan submersible blames design, maintenance, and inspection flaws for its failure. 'It all came back to Mr. Rush,' the head of the investigation told WIRED. Photograph: Paul Daly/ The Canadian Press via AP The US Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation has issued a scathing report on the implosion of the Titan submersible in 2023, singling out OceanGate's CEO and founder Stockton Rush for many of the company's technical and managerial failings. It says that he made 'sustained efforts to misrepresent the Titan as indestructible' and accuses the company of 'glaring disparities between their written safety protocols and their actual practices.' Jason Neubauer, who was the deputy chief of the Coast Guard's Office of Investigations, chaired the investigation and tells WIRED: 'All of the evidence pointed to a very singular leader in this operation. It all came back to Mr. Rush.' Rush was piloting the Titan on a trip to the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023 when the submersible imploded, instantly killing all five crew. Also on board were Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a veteran submariner known as 'Mr. Titanic,' and three paying passengers: entrepreneur Hamish Harding and a father and son pair, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. The Titan had made 13 previous successful dives to the famous site. The Coast Guard launched its investigation five days after the fatal incident and held two weeks of public hearings in September 2024. Technical testimony presented there detailed numerous flaws within the Titan's innovative carbon fiber hull, and highlighted operational failures on previous Titanic missions. These included one of the sub's titanium domes falling off after the sub's first attempt to reach the Titanic in 2021, and it being left outside in freezing conditions the winter before its final dives. Carbon fiber composites can degrade if water freezes in small voids in the material. Witnesses also alleged that Rush had ignored or glossed over numerous safety concerns raised by others in the submersible community and even by OceanGate's first director of marine operations, David Lochridge. Lochridge, who has not responded to inquiries, was fired in 2018 after detailing dozens of issues in an internal report. None of OceanGate's current senior executives testified at the hearings, nor were those responsible for managing operations of the final dive called to testify at the hearings. The new report says Rush fostered a toxic workplace environment, using the looming threat of being fired to dissuade employees from expressing safety concerns. The Titan was not registered or flagged with any nation, and had not been inspected or certified by any Coast Guard recognized organization. The report found that Rush himself had lied about the submersible's specifications when applying for his Coast Guard credentials, and the company had suggested several times that the Titan was or would be flagged in the Bahamas. 'The most surprising aspect of the investigation is how far outside of compliance that the Titan was operating and for how long,' says Neubauer. 'That fact stands out to me above any other incident I've ever investigated.' The new Coast Guard report stops short of finding a definitive mechanical cause for the fatal implosion, which occurred almost instantaneously at around 3,000 meters depth. However, it says that the facts strongly suggest that it was either the failure of a glue joint between the Titan's carbon fiber hull and a titanium ring, or a delamination within the carbon fiber itself, where layers of the materials separated from each other. The company never properly analyzed or tested the hull to understand flaws during manufacture or how long it might last, according to the Coast Guard. The report says that data from acoustic sensors and strain gauges on board indicated that the hull had suffered a delamination after a dive to the Titanic in 2022, causing a loud bang. Rush was said to have dismissed that noise, and the report found that there was no one left at the company in 2023 who was able to adequately interpret the sensor data. The company's director of engineering quit two months before the implosion. 'The power was consolidated in Mr. Rush,' says Neubauer. 'There was no set standard for how loud a noise or how many noises would make you take it out of service. I think that was intentional. They didn't want to take it out of service in the end.' The report contains numerous recommendations that would increase federal oversight of submersibles operated by US companies. It would also require them to be certified with third-party organizations, such as Lloyd's Register or the American Bureau of Shipping, even if they were operating in international waters like the Titan. That would practically rule out building a hull from carbon fiber, as none of those organizations have classed a crewed carbon fiber submersible to date. 'It doesn't seem to be the right material because of the way it takes cumulative damage over time,' says Neubauer. Tony Nissen, OceanGate's original director of engineering, questions the report's blanket criticism of the carbon fiber hull and its acoustic monitoring system. He notes that problems with the Titan's first hull were identified, in part, using the acoustic sensors, leading it to be scrapped and replaced. 'The design was not inadequate. For anyone to say the design was inadequate they would have to address the original manufacturer's analysis, and the success of the first hull,' he says. 'The real-time monitoring worked as designed and intended but for the second hull they ignored it.' 'We commend the US Coast Guard for its thorough work in confirming what industry experts have long known about the Titan tragedy—it was preventable,' says Will Kohnen, executive director of the non-profit World Submarine Organization. 'The challenge now is to move forward, building a better national and international regulatory framework for submersible operations, so that safety and responsible governance are the standard across this unique and complex industry.' The Coast Guard report also touches on issues with the search and rescue response after the Titan went missing. Neubauer says that some of the organizations listed as OceanGate's emergency contacts were not aware of the Titan's dive plans, and that the company should have had a robotic remotely operated vehicle (ROV) capable of diving to the same depth as the submersible. Although the world was on tenterhooks during the four day search and rescue effort for the Titan, Neubauer is skeptical that it could ever have succeeded. 'Even though we eventually found the submersible within the 96 hour window that was being advertised, I don't think we could have recovered the sub or the people if they had survived and it was entangled at the bottom,' he says. The ROV that located the debris had only a minimal capability to move or free the Titan, especially given that there would have been less than an hour of oxygen remaining. The Coast Guard report notes that if Rush had survived, he would possibly have been subject to criminal prosecution for negligence. It does not identify anyone else as subject to investigation. However, WIRED reported last year that the Southern District of New York was pursuing a criminal investigation into OceanGate, possibly related to its financing. The Department of Justice has not confirmed that investigation and its current status is uncertain. Relatives of Nargeolet are suing OceanGate, Rush's estate, and others involved in the Titan's manufacture in Washington state. Survivors of Rush, Nargeolet, and the paying passengers have not responded to requests for comment. OceanGate supplied the following statement: 'We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragedy. After the tragedy occurred, the company permanently wound down operations and directed its resources fully towards cooperating with the Coast Guard's inquiry through its completion.'
