![]() ![]() That process involves publishing rules and sending out engineers to review designs and inspectors to witness testing. Third-party agencies around the world, like the American Bureau of Shipping and DNV in Europe, are responsible for overseeing structures like ships, oil platforms and submarines to ensure that they're designed to specification, Kohnen explained. OceanGate's push to innovate worried industry experts The same is true for tourism purposes, he adds: "It just gets expensive." "We know very well how to build and how to design these machines and how to operate them safely." "We have submarines all over the world diving 12,000 to 20,000 feet every day of the year for research," he said. Kohnen doesn't see Titan's disappearance as a reason to take a step back from deep sea explorations as a whole. "And that was at the root of OceanGate's project, is that they were going to go solo, going without that type of official oversight, and that brought a lot of concerns." "Most of the companies in this industry that are building submersibles and deep submersibles follow a fairly well-established framework of certification and verification and oversight, through classification societies," he said. Kohnen told Morning Edition's A MartÃnez on Wednesday that the group's main concern was a lack of oversight and adherence to industry-accepted safety guidelines. NPR has reached out to OceanGate for comment. "Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry," he wrote, according to a copy obtained by the New York Times. In March 2018, after one of the international industry group's annual conferences, Kohnen drafted a letter to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush - the pilot of the missing vessel - expressing "unanimous concern" on behalf of its members about the development of the Titan and its planned Titanic expeditions. "We've been aware of this project for some time and have had some concerns." "It hasn't surprised us," said Will Kohnen, the chair of the Marine Technology Society's Submarine Committee (formerly the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee), about the Titan's disappearance. ![]() Several of those complaints have resurfaced this week, as the frantic search for the vessel - and its five passengers - continues. Experts from within and outside OceanGate raised concerns about the safety of its Titan submersible as far back as 2018, years before it went missing during a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck site.
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