What could happen to future Titanic expeditions after deadly submersible tragedy

The death of five people on board a tourist submersible headed for the Titanic wreckage has cast a shadow on all such trips and explorations in the foreseeable future, according to media reports.

Titan, the doomed submersible operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was lost in deep sea after what authorities described as a "catastrophic implosion", killing Dubai-based British billionaire Hamish Harding, UK-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, French submarine operator Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

The incident grabbed global headlines amid a days-long frantic search for the five passengers — and also put the spotlight on the murky world of deep sea exploration.

An Associated Press (AP) report put it this way: “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.”

“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,” Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor at Campbell University in North Carolina who focuses on maritime history and policy, told the AP.

“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.”

The Titanic wreckage lies around 12,500 feet below sea level — more than four-and-half times the height of the Burj Khalifa. The enormous pressure underwater at that depth is around 400 times what it is on the surface. Very few vessels can survive there.

In the aftermath of the incident involving Titan, which went missing on June 18, The Explorers Club, a New York-based organisation dedicated to scientific expeditions and advancement of field exploration, said it was not aware of any plans to explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, the New York Post reported.

Earlier, David Scott-Beddard, CEO of White Star Memories Ltd, which deals in memorabilia and artefacts, told the CNN that the Titan mishap had “without a doubt” impacted the chances to visit and study the Titanic’s wreck.

“The chances of any future research being carried out on the wreck of Titanic is extremely slim. Probably not in my lifetime,” Scott-Beddard was quoted as saying by the CNN. He added that after an inquiry into the disaster, more stringent rules will likely be introduced.

Maritime expert Mercogliano told the AP that deep sea operations, like the one Titan was involved in, were scrutinised 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 report said.

It has been reported widely that the Titan wasn't registered as a US vessel or with international agencies that regulate safety. It was not even classified by a “maritime industry group that sets standards on matters such as hull construction”, the AP reported.

The Titan was a 21-foot vessel launched from another ship, the Canadian Polar Prince, a setup that Mercogliano likened to pulling a boat on a trailer. “The highway patrol has jurisdiction over the car and over the trailer, but not over the boat,” he told the AP. “The boat is cargo.”

An international group of agencies with representatives from the US, Canada, France and the United Kingdom is probing the Titan tragedy that unfolded over five days — till authorities announced on June 22 that a violent "catastrophic implosion" could have killed the crew aboard. Investigators are looking into what caused the implosion.

“My primary goal is to prevent a similar occurrence by making the necessary recommendations to advance the safety of the maritime domain worldwide,” US Coast Guard chief investigator Capt. Jason Neubauer said, according to another AP report a week after the submersible’s final dive.

Michael Guillen, who was the first TV reporter to visit the Titanic wreckage, said all trips to the ocean liner that sank in 1912 should be stopped until the cause of the recent tragedy was determined, according to a report on the Yahoo News website. The report described Guillen as a scientist and journalist who visited the wreckage two decades ago.

"Whether we find the vessel and, and determine what went wrong with this vessel, we need to stop, pause, take a deep breath and ask people this question, why do you want to go to the Titanic and how do you get there safely?" the report quoted him as saying.

Ever since the resting place of the Titanic was found in a 1985 expedition led by explorer Robert Ballard and French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel, competition over who would be allowed to salvage artifacts from the ship has heated up — and tourists have been able to go to the site, according to an article on the website of the National Geographic.

Ballard had called for designating the wreck a maritime memorial and urged that the site be left undisturbed in memory of the 1,500 people who died on the ill-fated ship, which was once thought unsinkable but went down after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on its maiden voyage.

But that was not to be.

"In 1998, British company Deep Ocean Expeditions were among the first to sell tickets to the public at $32,500 each to see the remains of the Titanic. In 2012, expedition leader Rob McCallum said the company was organising one final round of tours after having gone down to the wreck 197 times. Those last expeditions in 2012 each lasted 12 days and took 20 passengers for $59,000 apiece," the National Geographic article said.

It pointed out that Los Angeles-based travel firm Bluefish also ran Titanic dives — and so did London-based Blue Marble, which had partnered with OceanGate Expeditions. OceanGate, according to the article, conducted successful expeditions in 2021 and 2022. It charged $250,000 for a seat.

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