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Speaker 1: it already, and this this is the Daily This is
Speaker 1: the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to
Speaker 2: the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the seventh of August. I'm
Speaker 2: Emma Gillespie.
Speaker 1: I'm Sam Kazlowski.
Speaker 2: More than two years after the implosion of a submersible
Speaker 2: expedition to the Titanic wreck, the US Coast Guard has
Speaker 2: released its final report into what went wrong. According to
Speaker 2: the three hundred and thirty five page document, the disaster,
Speaker 2: which killed five people, was preventable and driven flawed design,
Speaker 2: regulatory avoidance, and a toxic workplace culture. This landmark report
Speaker 2: paints a damning picture of Oceangate, the company behind the mission,
Speaker 2: and of its late CEO, Stockton Rush. Today we are
Speaker 2: going to take you through what happened to the Titan,
Speaker 2: what the report found, its recommendations, and whether anyone could
Speaker 2: still face legal consequences.
Speaker 1: Emma, why don't we go back to revisit this story.
Speaker 1: It was two years ago. It was the biggest story
Speaker 1: in the world for a while there. It's now got
Speaker 1: a documentary on Netflix that has almost brought it back
Speaker 1: into the frame. And now we've got this report. Take
Speaker 1: me back to what the titan sub was and what
Speaker 1: happened to it.
Speaker 2: Yes, so the titan was a deep sea submersible operated
Speaker 2: by this private US company called ocean Gate. Now when
Speaker 2: I say submersible, it was a vessel about the size
Speaker 2: of a mini van and for the price of two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand US dollars per per tourists were
Speaker 2: offered the chance to travel down in the submersible to
Speaker 2: see the wreck of the Titanic, the iconic shipwreck which
Speaker 2: lies about three and a half thousand meters underwater in
Speaker 2: the North Atlantic. Now, on the eighteenth of June twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, five people were on board the Titan that
Speaker 2: includes Ocean Gates CEO and pilot of the vessels stocked
Speaker 2: and Rush, a British billionaire named Hamish Harding, French Titanic
Speaker 2: expert Paul Henri Najalais, and Pakistani businessman Shazada Darwood, who
Speaker 2: was there with his teenage son. The vessel lost contact
Speaker 2: about an hour and forty five minutes into its journey,
Speaker 2: and what followed was, as you would remember, an international
Speaker 2: search and rescue effort that absolutely gripped the world.
Speaker 1: And when they first went missing, there was this hope
Speaker 1: that the crew could still be alive.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so we knew that the crew had four days
Speaker 2: worth of oxygen emergency oxygen, so in the event that
Speaker 2: they got trapped on the ocean floor, there would be
Speaker 2: four days hypothetically for them to survive down there. But
Speaker 2: on the twenty second of June, debris from the sub
Speaker 2: was found near the Titanic site, roughly six hundred k's
Speaker 2: off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. Now officials confirmed
Speaker 2: pretty much straightaway that the vessel had imploded on its descent,
Speaker 2: killing everyone on board instantly.
Speaker 1: And the reason we're talking about it today is that
Speaker 1: the US Coast Guard has released this very lengthy report
Speaker 1: into the incident, trying to break down exactly where things
Speaker 1: went wrong. Before we get into the report itself. Just
Speaker 1: explain to me the role of the US Coast Guard
Speaker 1: in all of this.
Speaker 2: Yes, so the Coast Guard or the USCG is responsible
Speaker 2: for a whole raft of maritime measures, including leading rescue missions,
Speaker 2: does that in US waters or in international areas under
Speaker 2: US responsibility. It has maritime security responsibilities, and it also
Speaker 2: acts as a regulatory and certificational authority, so it has
Speaker 2: some safety responsibilities. Like in the case of the Titan Sub.
Speaker 2: The Coast Guard leads investigations also into marine casualties, So
Speaker 2: where there is loss of life or potential violations of
Speaker 2: maritime law, it will lead investigations. Now, in line with that,
Speaker 2: the Coast Guard led the Titan sub investigation because Oceangate
Speaker 2: was a US based company and several of its passengers
Speaker 2: were US citizens, despite the fact that it imploded somewhere
Speaker 2: in international waters off Canada.
Speaker 1: So they've spent two years looking at this incident. What's
Speaker 1: the top line finding here?
Speaker 2: So the biggest finding here is that the deaths of
Speaker 2: the five people on board were entirely preventable and that
Speaker 2: Oceangate failed at its leadership level and at every level
Speaker 2: across the board. So the report found that the vessel's
Speaker 2: design was never certified by independent engineers, and if you've
Speaker 2: seen the Netflix stock o that goes into this a
Speaker 2: little bit. Essentially, the vessel constructed and needed the certification
Speaker 2: of a third party group to say, yep, this is
Speaker 2: fit to explore the ocean floor to this certain depth,
Speaker 2: and with that certification it would have been able to
Speaker 2: sell tickets and operate as a fully legit tourist provider.
Speaker 2: Safety warnings from engineers and staff were repeatedly ignored, the
Speaker 2: report found, and it also said that key safety processes
Speaker 2: were missing or deliberately avoided. One of the biggest red
Speaker 2: flags that we've learned about in this report and over
Speaker 2: the course of the last two years from various whistleblowers
Speaker 2: is the use of carbon fiber for the Titan's main
Speaker 2: pressure hull.
Speaker 1: As in the hull itself was made of carbon fiber.
Speaker 2: Yes, so the part of the sub that keeps the
Speaker 2: passengers alive under extreme pressure at depths of three thousand
Speaker 2: and four thousand meters below the sea level. That material
Speaker 2: had never been used in a deep sea sub like
Speaker 2: this before, so in the early days of the Titan sub,
Speaker 2: the carbon fiber element was seen as really innovative as
Speaker 2: this big breakthrough because carbon fiber is incredibly light, it's
Speaker 2: a lot cheaper and easier to use, so there were
Speaker 2: a lot of reasons to kind of be excited about
Speaker 2: carbon fiber being in the hull.
Speaker 1: So is that actually in terms of the mechanics of it,
Speaker 1: is that what failed to lead to the implosion? Yep.
Speaker 2: Now to understand this we have to do a little
Speaker 2: bit of quick science talk about carbon fiber. But think
Speaker 2: of carbon fiber like millions of little strands of string,
Speaker 2: all connected, so all of those little strands can break
Speaker 2: or weaken. An analysis of the sub showed that this
Speaker 2: process had begun, called delamination. The layers of the carbon
Speaker 2: fiber had started to separate, so there was evidence of
Speaker 2: stress damage to the hull, and every time one of
Speaker 2: those strings broke or came apart, it weakened the entire structure.
Speaker 2: Engineers and staff had reportedly raised concerns about the design
Speaker 2: on several occasions over the course of many years, but
Speaker 2: according to the report from the Coast Guard oceangate created
Speaker 2: a quote culture of fear and retaliation that silenced employees.
Speaker 2: One employee was even fired after raising safety concerns and
Speaker 2: multiple employees left the company during the development of the
Speaker 2: sub and prior to that fatal journey in June twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three.
Speaker 1: And I think what really strikes me about this report
Speaker 1: is that it doesn't seem to be one factor just
Speaker 1: in isolation. It's the conflation of factors. It's the idea
Speaker 1: that you can have a material that wasn't seaworthy, but
Speaker 1: then the concerns raised not being heard because of company
Speaker 1: culture exactly. Either one of those by itself perhaps wouldn't
Speaker 1: have led to this outcome. Tell me about the role
Speaker 1: of the CEO, Stockton Rush in all of this, because
Speaker 1: he was on board when the sub imploded, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he died with the four other passengers. But
Speaker 2: the findings against him in this report are incredibly scathing.
Speaker 2: So the overarching theme or all of the findings kind
Speaker 2: of trace back to this common finding that he had
Speaker 2: this intense influence over everything and almost a narcissistic arrogance
Speaker 2: about achieving the goal of taking the sub to the Titanic,
Speaker 2: regardless of any safety risks. So he was the CEO,
Speaker 2: the lead designer, the pilot, and the report says he
Speaker 2: pursued innovation and speed as in speed to achieve the
Speaker 2: expedition over safety and skipped established testing procedures. In fact,
Speaker 2: the report says, and I think this is really critical
Speaker 2: and what a lot of people have been waiting for,
Speaker 2: that if he had survived, he would have likely faced
Speaker 2: criminal charges for his role in the disaster and for
Speaker 2: contributing to the deaths of the passengers.
Speaker 1: The report was really detailed about the way in which
Speaker 1: he influenced company culture and his leadership style. Give me
Speaker 1: a quick sense of the specifics there about that culture piece.
Speaker 2: Yes, so there's a strong link between Rush and these
Speaker 2: findings of a toxic work environment. The report states that
Speaker 2: for several years preceding the incident, Oceangate cut corners, quote,
Speaker 2: leveraged intimidation tactics and what the report called the company's
Speaker 2: favorable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny. So this reputation of
Speaker 2: being a really innovative company doing something exciting and different,
Speaker 2: and that they took advantage of that. The finding stated
Speaker 2: that by strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges,
Speaker 2: Oceangate was ultimately able to operate Titan completely outside of
Speaker 2: the established deep sea protocols, which had historically contributed to
Speaker 2: a strong safety record for commercial submersibles.
Speaker 1: And what about the other passengers in all of this,
Speaker 1: I mean, were they aware of all of these risks
Speaker 1: and perhaps regulatory missing pieces before they jumped into that vessel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a question that has come up a lot
Speaker 2: over the last couple of years. And the report found
Speaker 2: ultimately that the passengers were misled by the company. The
Speaker 2: report says Oceangate called the passengers mission special and this
Speaker 2: was a sort of loophole to get around the fact
Speaker 2: that they were not certified to run the expedition with
Speaker 2: paying tourists. But by bringing these people on as mission specialists,
Speaker 2: they could argue that each person on board had a
Speaker 2: particular role so served a purpose in that way, and
Speaker 2: the contracts that they were made to sign really downplayed
Speaker 2: the risks. In some cases, they overstated how tested and
Speaker 2: safe the vessel really was. And to quote the report quote,
Speaker 2: there was a systematic pattern of misrepresentation in how Oceangate
Speaker 2: described for Titan's capabilities and testing history to clients and
Speaker 2: to the public.
Speaker 1: So this large report has come out. Have we heard
Speaker 1: from Oceangate in response to the report, and are they
Speaker 1: still actually operating as a company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's worth noting the company essentially ceased operations after
Speaker 2: the disaster just weeks after, so it hasn't responded directly
Speaker 2: to the report at the time of recording. The website's
Speaker 2: been taken down, and Oceangate hasn't made any public statements
Speaker 2: for over a year. I don't think anyone is really
Speaker 2: expecting to hear from anyone affiliated with Oceangate. A lot
Speaker 2: of the people that worked for them have tried really
Speaker 2: hard to distance themselves from that period of their careers.
Speaker 1: Have we heard much from the families of the passengers
Speaker 1: who died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of the families have spoken out this week,
Speaker 2: in particular the Darwood family, so that's the father and
Speaker 2: son who died on board. They released a statement saying
Speaker 2: no report could ease their loss, but they're hopeful that
Speaker 2: it will lead to accountability and prevent future tragedies.
Speaker 1: I was really interested by that note that you raised
Speaker 1: around the fact that it was likely that the CEO
Speaker 1: would face criminal charges had he not been part of
Speaker 1: the group that died. Are they going to be any
Speaker 1: legal consequences for this? Obviously not surrounding him, but surrounding
Speaker 1: other personnel in the company or the company itself.
Speaker 2: It is possible. So while we know Oceangate no longer
Speaker 2: exists as a company, the Coast Guard has referred the
Speaker 2: case to US federal prosecutors, and that could then open
Speaker 2: the door to civil lawsuit or even criminal charges for
Speaker 2: anyone else involved. But in terms of criminal proceedings, Stocked
Speaker 2: and Rush, the CEO really is at the center of
Speaker 2: all of the negligence that can be traced back to
Speaker 2: human decision makingper interesting, but on a broader level, you know,
Speaker 2: we could see civil suits from the families. And the
Speaker 2: report calls for really significant change to how submersibles like
Speaker 2: this are regulated, and particularly how private companies operate them,
Speaker 2: because right now it's a pretty unregulated space.
Speaker 1: And one quote that really stood out to me in
Speaker 1: those recommendations and that sense of discussing, you know, this
Speaker 1: isn't the last time that we're going to see people
Speaker 1: try and push the barriers of exploration, be it in
Speaker 1: space or under the ocean or on land. That line
Speaker 1: around innovation must never come at the cost of safety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about the recommendations to kind of wrap this
Speaker 1: all up, how does the US Coast Guard think that
Speaker 1: we should all move forward in this space.
Speaker 2: So there are seventeen recommendations, a lot focused on safety
Speaker 2: and certification. So the fact that that third party certification
Speaker 2: never happened for the Titan, ultimately the Coastguard wants to
Speaker 2: ensure that never happens again. So there's a series of
Speaker 2: regulations there. There are recommendations for stronger whistle blower protections
Speaker 2: because we know that several employees really tried to raise
Speaker 2: the alarm on this before the tragedy happened. And there's
Speaker 2: recommendations around clearer oversight of deep sea exploration, so frameworks
Speaker 2: around international waters tourism in that space and who should
Speaker 2: be responsible for kind of global safety and safety frameworks.
Speaker 2: And it's recommended to ban or strictly limit the use
Speaker 2: of unproven materials like carbon fiber for primary hold pressure
Speaker 2: vessels until they can be independently validated in deep ocean conditions.
Speaker 1: It really gives me the sense that they're trying to
Speaker 1: strike a balance between preserving that space for deep sea exploration,
Speaker 1: the natural human desire to figure out what's out there
Speaker 1: and what's deeper than we've ever gone before. But also
Speaker 1: make sure that things are happening safely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you don't want to over regulate this space
Speaker 2: to limit scientific exploration. But I guess there's a divide
Speaker 2: between tourism versus valid scientific exploration and research. I think
Speaker 2: to wrap it up, it's all about kind of correcting
Speaker 2: failures and plugging regulatory gaps. But as the report said,
Speaker 2: Oceangate strategy was to circumvent regulatory frameworks rather than engage
Speaker 2: with them in good faith. So hopefully this is a
Speaker 2: turning point for how deep sea tourism is regulated.
Speaker 1: All right, m So, right now the Coast Guard will
Speaker 1: hand this to prosecutors and we'll wait to see if
Speaker 1: some of those more formal criminal charges or civil cases
Speaker 1: are laid. Thank you so much for taking us through that,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, and thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: on the Daily Ods this morning. We're going to be
Speaker 1: back in your headphones with those headlines in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: Until then, have a fantastic dame. We'll speak to you later.
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