Canada must close submersible regulation loopholes, expert warns

Canada's Transportation Safety Board released its findings this week from the OceanGate Titan disaster, exposing a troubling gap: the country has limited or no regulations on submersibles operating in its waters.

Will Kohnen, executive director of the World Submarine Organization and a California-based veteran of the submersible industry, watched the TSB report closely. He agreed with many of its findings, including a recommendation that Transport Canada ensure submersibles operating in Canadian waters or with Canadian support vessels adhere to international standards.

But Kohnen is urging a different path: let the industry lead on standards rather than getting bogged down in government bureaucracy.

"This has to be efficient for economic reasons, because if it's not economically efficient, people are going to find loopholes and ways around it. And that's what OceanGate did," Kohnen told CBC News.

The submersible industry already has generally accepted standards set by classification societies that assess the vast majority of submersibles operating worldwide and determine whether they are safe. At the time of the Titan disaster, there were 10 submersibles in the world capable of diving to the Titanic wreckage. Titan was the only one not classed.

"This is standard," Kohnen said. "Ninety-five per cent of all submersibles in the world are classed by some classification society, so OceanGate was way offline and off base not classing their submersibles."

Kohnen was among a group of industry leaders who warned OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in a 2018 letter against taking that approach, warning that the decision not to class its submersibles could have "catastrophic" consequences. They were right. Titan went missing on June 18, 2023, early in a dive to the Titanic wreckage. A debris field was found on June 22. Five people, including Rush, were killed.

Questions immediately followed about how Titan could have left a Canadian port with a Canadian support vessel without any classification or certification. The TSB report notes that some countries, including the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and Japan, require submersibles to be classified. Others have regulatory frameworks. Canada does not.

The International Marine Organization, a UN agency responsible for regulating marine transportation, established guidelines on passenger submersibles in 2001 — but they are non-binding, meaning Canada is not required to follow them.

The TSB has recommended Transport Canada advocate to the IMO to make those standards enforceable. The submersible industry is on board with that direction, though the IMO guidelines will need updating before they become part of any binding code.