(CNN) – Four days of hearings into the 2023 implosion of the Titan submersible, which killed all five people on board, concluded this week with more damning testimony recounting multiple safety incidents over the years.
Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton Submarines, testified at Friday’s hearing that he was concerned about the submersible’s lack of certification.
Lahey said he saw the Titan in March 2019 while in the Bahamas and was “not impressed,” and told OceanGate staff.
“It didn’t seem to me like it was particularly well thought out or executed. I saw evidence that they were crimping cables to hold weights, it just seemed amateurish in its execution,” he said. “I came away from that visit thinking, well, that’s a relief, I don’t think that takes people on meaningful dives and I obviously underestimated their tenacity.”
OceanGate purchased several submersibles from Triton Submarines.
Lahey said he believes manned vehicles should be accredited and was concerned that Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate, did not objectively evaluate the submersible and seek outside opinions to ensure the craft was safe.
Lahey also said he knew Rush considered the certification process “a waste of time” and “an impediment to innovation.”
“The certification process works, we know it works. Our safety record proves it,” Lahey continued. “We need to insist on continued human exploration of the deep sea on certified and accredited machines, not experimental ones, there is no place for experimental machines in the deep sea.”
Diving on Titan “was never supposed to be safe,” OceanGate mission specialist Fred Hagen said during his testimony Friday.
“Anyone who felt safe descending to depths on the Titan was deluded or delusional, it was an experimental ship, it was clearly dangerous,” Hagen said. “You don’t do it because it’s safe, you do it for the adrenaline rush.”
Hagen said “there was an incident” in 2021, just days before a dive he participated in, in which, as the Titan was being hoisted onto the ramp, rocking back and forth, the crane operator abruptly let go of it. and the submersible crashed into the deck.
The force of the impact sheared several bolts that “shot out like bullets” and the titanium dome fell off. Only four of the 18 bolts on the 3,500-pound (1,587.5 kilogram) titanium dome had been installed.
During that dive, they realized that the Titan was unbalanced and spiraled downward, free falling for approximately two and a half hours.
Communications were erratic and veered off course, and when they activated the thrusters to return to course, the starboard thrusters failed and spun in circles, he said.
On another dive during the 2022 Titanic expedition, they became entangled in the wreckage of the ship for about a minute or two, he added.
Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate engineering contractor, testified Friday that she repeatedly raised concerns and was repeatedly ignored.
During Dive 79 of the 2022 Titanic expedition in July, Wilby was working on navigation when parts of the Titan’s acoustic communications and navigation systems broke down.
When Wilby expressed her concerns about the breakdown, she was told she did not have an “explorer mentality.” He was concerned that escalating his concerns to the board of directors would breach his confidentiality agreement.
She was also told she was not a “solution-oriented” person and was eventually removed from the communications and navigation teams. At some point, Wilby told them, “This is an idiotic way to do your navigation.”
“No aspect of the operation seemed safe to me,” he said. “When you answer specific questions with that’s what the founder of the company wants, instead of actual design decisions and data and analysis, it was a red flag for me.”
Steven Ross, a marine scientist and former OceanGate scientific director, said during his testimony Thursday that the Titan submersible suffered a failure six days before imploding in June 2023.
A deck failure during Dive 87 on Titan’s fourth mission in 2023 caused all five people on board to crash into the stern of the submersible for at least an hour, Ross said.
Ross also mentioned two incidents during the 2022 Titanic expedition dives, including a loud bang heard while ascending on Dive 80. On Dive 81, Ross claimed there was a thruster failure.
Triton Submarines and other members of the Marine Technology Society (MTS) wrote a letter to OceanGate expressing concern about the development of the Titan. An MTS member shared a draft of the letter with OceanGate. Rush and the MTS president spoke and agreed to disagree on the draft. The full, finalized version of the letter was never formally sent to OceanGate.
David Lochridge, a former OceanGate marine exploration director who raised safety concerns about the Titan submersible, said during testimony earlier this week that the Titan tragedy could have been prevented if U.S. safety authorities had investigated its complaints. He also criticized OceanGate’s business culture for being focused on “making money” and offering “very little in terms of science.”
“I believe that if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I raised on multiple occasions, this tragedy could have been prevented,” Lochridge said.
