Missing Titanic sub crew killed after ‘catastrophic implosion’: Live updates

The design of the Titan submersible “demanded special extra attention,” according to the William Kohnen, chair of the Marine Technology Society’s manned underwater vehicles committee, adding that he had conversations with the late OceanGate CEO to express his concerns about the company’s approach to submersibles.

Kohnen, who is also president of the Hydrospace Group, said he made requests to OceanGate to makes its website more transparent to spell out that the Titan design was “experimental” and “not certified.” They ultimately changed it, he said.

Speaking to Anderson Cooper on “CNN This Morning,” Kohnen said the carbon fiber hull “demanded special extra attention just because that had never been done before.” It meant an “additional effort and probably quite a bit of extra testing to get passed through that certification process,” he said.

The small community of submersible experts had numerous conversations with the late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Kohnen said, and they issued a letter essentially saying, “you are going really, really fast over here and you’re ignoring some of the knowledge base that we have for these things.” 

Kohnen said Rush’s response amounted to “the existing regulations are stifling innovation and it’s too slow, and we have a better method.”

He called for full disclosure in the industry. “Just tell the public this is not certified, this is experimental, and then it leaves some of the decisions to people to make,” he added.