UMVA has learned that a scathing report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board (TSB) has revealed critical regulatory blind spots and federal bureaucratic roadblocks that allowed the doomed Titan submersible to operate unfettered out of Canadian ports, despite Transport Canada's awareness of its operations.
The TSB report highlighted that Transport Canada was unaware the Titan submersible, which imploded on June 18, 2023, killing five people, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, held no active registration in any country. This lack of oversight enabled the experimental sub to operate without proper scrutiny.
According to information obtained by UMVA, the Titan submersible was en route to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic when it imploded at a depth of 3,346 meters, where outside water pressure was nearly the weight of an adult grizzly bear pressing on each square cm. of the vessel's hull.
The report noted that the Titan's pressure hull consisted of a carbon fiber cylinder capped at either end by titanium domes, a novel design that had never been tested to prove its theoretical strength. OceanGate did not know for how long the Titan's pressure hull would remain structurally intact when used repeatedly for dives to the depth of the Titanic.
UMVA can exclusively reveal that the TSB pointed to three critical gaps that allowed the Titan disaster to slip through the cracks — regulatory blind spots with Transport Canada, Canada's siloed bureaucracy, and OceanGate's untested safety systems. These gaps enabled the Titan to operate in Canadian waters with no oversight.
The investigation found that Canadian government departments interacted with OceanGate from 2019 until the time of the occurrence, but Transport Canada had no processes to obtain and use this information. This lack of communication and oversight resulted in increased risk to those involved in the Titan's operations.
The TSB report included six recommendations to prevent similar disasters, including closing loopholes for domestic uncertified vessels, tracking foreign and unregistered commercial vessels, ending bureaucratic silos, and mandating certification for submersibles operating from Canadian ports.
The Titan submersible relied upon two Canadian-flagged vessels, the Horizon Arctic and Polar Prince, to act as its mothership during many of its dives. The Polar Prince was the Titan's mothership during its ill-fated final dive three years ago.
