Will the Titan disaster tank the submersible tourism industry?

Debris from the Titan submersible, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, is unloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John's, Newfoundland on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. – The Canadian Press via AP

ANNITA Thomas felt nervous about her first small submersible dive in the Sea of Cortez, off California's coastline, in April 2023. The worry dissipated quickly as the seven-passenger underwater vehicle dipped below the surface of the water, leaving behind the Scenic Eclipse discovery yacht from which her adventure started. The sound of pilot transmitting periodic safety checks was a comfort amid the thrill.

"I'm really glad I did it," says the on-air host of Travel with Annita, recalling the 360-degree views of the sea bottom from the submersible's transparent acrylic hull, at a depth just shy of 1,000 feet. "I don't think I would do it now," she adds, citing the implosion of OceanGate Expedition's Titan.

The loss of five lives on the Titan has thrown into question the safety of underwater expeditions: Could this be the end of deep-sea tourism?

In 2023, submersible tourism has become more common that it might sound. Personal submersibles are used widely by cruise lines, yacht operators and a small number of tourist sub operations to explore pristine coastlines, arctic waters and coral reefs. They rarely achieve depths greater than 1,000m. Titan was intended to descend four times as far.

"No one has yet said, 'Submersible tourism is a bad idea, let's cancel it,'" says Charles Kohnen, co-founder of the pioneering, California-based, SEAmagine Hydrospace Corp. SEAmagine revolutionised the traditional submarine industry in the 1990s when Kohnen and his co-founding brother William, both engineers, designed and built the first known personal submersibles. The company's two-person crewed vessels were initially conceived for research and tourism, offering hour-long trips off the coast of California.

"There's a difference between flying an experimental airplane versus flying (a Federal Aviation Authority)-approved airplane," Kohnen says in reference to the now well-publicised fact that OceanGate's Titan sub operation was an outlier in lacking certification.

The submersible industry is otherwise strictly regulated by government-approved bodies, or "classification societies," that are technical experts in ship safety in the United States and abroad. Yacht, cruise and luxury operators in the submersible business understand this distinction, Kohnen explains.

People are asking questions as a result of the Titan's implosion, says Erik Hasselman, commercial director at Netherlands-based U-Boat Worx, whose submersibles have been used since 2009 on board private yachts, and since 2016 by luxury cruise lines. Its clients include Seabourn Cruises, Viking Cruises and Scenic Luxury Cruises & Tours. But so far, he says he hasn't seen cancellations.

"We have to see the longer-term effects, but business is continuing here as normal," he explains, adding that the demand for personal submersibles (and pilot training courses) has been growing in recent years. U-Boat Worx's vessels are luxury products, after all. They are the ultimate yacht toy, ranging from a two-person capsule for €590,000 (RM3mil) to a nine-person model (€6mil, RM30.5mil), each capable of descending about 1,000m. Other leisure sub manufacturers include Triton Submarines, which declined to comment for this story.

Submersible tourism on the rise

Where submersibles used to be limited to research and government use, there are now about 200 worldwide that are not for military use, Kohnen explains. Of those, about 25 to 30 are on private yachts. The industry's wares are just starting to become accessible to luxury leisure travelers.

So far, there are a handful of ways to book this type of trip. In Curaçao, you can take a 60- to 90-minute dive (starting from US$350, RM1,635), from U-Boat Worx's local substation, to see panoramic views of vibrant coral reefs or shipwrecks. In the Bahamas, you could shell out a cool US$700,000 (RM3.27mil) for high-end operator Kensington Tours' 10-day yacht tour, which includes daily submersible dives around the archipelago from the 130-foot Lionshare tri-deck motor yacht.

In Costa Rica, the Undersea Hunter live-aboard luxury yacht sails around the protected Cocos Island National Park, with access to a "DeepSee" three-person SEAmagine submersible.

Perhaps easiest, you can take excursions on expedition ships from luxury cruise lines. For instance, guests on Seabourn Cruises' Seabourn Venture and Seabourn Pursuit ships can pay around US$500 (RM2,300) for excursions that explore the depths of Antarctica or the Norwegian fjords, among others places, on U-Boat Worx subs.

All are limited to the same 1,000m threshold, which is still far deeper than the average scuba dive. (Those typically top out around 40m.) Lower depths, says Kohnen, become "big stuff" that requires a different type of vessel-a metal hull with portholes, rather than a completely transparent bubble.

A regulated industry

Additional distinctions separate these more common luxury experiences from OceanGate's extreme, explorer-oriented missions. The aforementioned safety standards are most critical: All of the vessels from SEAmagine, U-Boat Worx and Florida-based Triton Submarines are certified by ship classification societies in their home countries.

U-Boat Worx says it receives an annual visit from its classification body, which is based in Germany, to check all its systems and logbooks and to ensure that maintenance has been done correctly. This includes performing safety dives, Hasselman says. "Then you'll get a stamp, and you're good to go for another year."

Passing the test marks a vehicle as "formally-classed" and inspected. Before booking a trip, you can ask operators if their submersible has this label. It's also worth checking the number of dives a company has completed in its certified subs; the figure surpasses 12,000 for SEAmagine, for instance, while OceanGate's Titan had just 13 dives and was uncertified.

Another big difference: Leisure submersibles are buoyant. They use propellers to drive the vessel under water, rather than having to fall like a rock and using ballast tanks for stabilization, as with the Titan. "If you lose power and everything shuts off, [personal submersibles] will always float back to the surface," says Kohnen. "What's more, for subs built and approved to code, you know exactly how many times you can go to your maximum depth; it's not a guess." He says that simply isn't true of experimental subs.

The challenge now, for Kohnen and his industry colleagues, will be marketing these trips in such a way that addresses misconceptions without stoking fears of future disasters.

The future will bring yacht-sub hybrids

In what may be very good news for the industry, the next generation of personal submersibles is doubling down not on extreme exploration but extreme luxury. SEAmagine is expecting delivery in January of its ultra-high-end Aurora-90 five-seater, after it undergoes sea trials in October. With a 90-inch viewing sphere, it will have a roomier passenger cabin that will feel properly upscale, with leather seating, an interior sound system and air-conditioning.

Further off is the €25mil (RM127mil) Nautilus underwater superyacht from U-Boat Worx, for which only renderings currently exist. Construction will begin when an order is placed and is expected to take 30 months. This yacht-sub hybrid will have all the swish features of a luxury boat, including a bar, jacuzzi, sun deck and a swimming platform that's accessed at sea level. True to its name, this will be a proper yacht-albeit one capable of travelling 500 feet underwater.

For his part, Kohnen hopes one thing is clear about the tragedy that unfolded near the Titanic wreck: It wouldn't have happened if OceanGate had adhered to the standards that the rest of the industry follows. In 2018, in fact, his brother William Kohnen, chair of the US Marine Technology Society's Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee, addressed a letter to OceanGate's late chief executive officer with a prescient warning.

"The MUV industry has earned itself an enviable safety track record over the past 40 years," he wrote, crediting "the collective observation of (and adherence to) a variety of safety standards." If these were disrupted, he continued, it could "have serious consequences for everyone in the industry."

Charles Kohnen adds that plenty of vessels have been capable of making the journey deeper than 4,000 meters-with proper standards.

"It's not that we're pushing the boundary of technology," he explains. "This whole thing was 100% avoidable." – Bloomberg