When the Titan submersible made its fateful dive into the North Atlantic on Sunday, it also plunged into the murkily regulated waters of deep-sea exploration. It’s a space on the high seas where laws and conventions can be sidestepped by risk-taking entrepreneurs and the wealthy tourists who help fund their dreams. At least for now.
“We’re at a point in submersible operations in deep water that’s kind of akin to where aviation was in the early 20th century,” said Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy.
“Aviation was in its infancy — and it took accidents for decisions to be made to be put into laws,” Mercogliano said. “There’ll be a time when you won’t think twice about getting on a submersible and going down 13,000 feet. But we’re not there yet.”
Thursday’s announcement by the U.S. Coast Guard that the Titan had imploded near the Titanic shipwreck, killing all five people on board, has drawn attention to how these expeditions are regulated. Mercogliano said such operations are scrutinized less than the companies that launch people into space. In the Titan’s case, that’s in part because it operated in international waters, far from the reach of many laws of the United States or other nations.
The Titan wasn’t registered as a U.S. vessel or with international agencies that regulate safety, Mercogliano added. Nor was it classified by a maritime industry group that sets standards on matters such as hull construction. Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO who died on Titan, had said he didn’t want to be bogged down by such standards. The Titan was a small vessel that was launched from another ship, the Canadian icebreaker Polar Prince, a setup that Mercogliano likened to pulling a boat on a trailer, in terms of regulatory purposes.
“The highway patrol has jurisdiction over the car and over the trailer, but not over the boat,” he said. “The boat is cargo.”
Experts say wrongful death and negligence lawsuits are likely in the Titan case — and they could be successful. But legal actions will face various challenges, including waivers signed by the Titan passengers that warned of the myriad ways they could die.
