The Coast Guard’s OceanGate Hearings Start Next Week—but Key Witnesses Won’t Appear

On Monday, September 16, the US Coast Guard is convening a Marine Board of Investigation hearing into the loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible in June 2023 and the deaths of the five people on board, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. It intends to use the two-week livestreamed hearing in Charleston, South Carolina, to help it determine the cause of sub’s implosion, if incompetence or negligence was involved, and whether any laws were broken. It could then refer the matter to criminal prosecutors and make recommendations to improve marine safety.

It hopes to do all that without publicly hearing from most of OceanGate’s remaining executives or Rush’s wife Wendy, who sometimes took a leading role during Stockton’s dives. Nor will the investigation include public testimony from any of the companies that designed and built the Titan’s innovative carbon fiber hulls, or any of the senior operations staff who prepared, maintained, or supported the Titan on its 2023 expedition.

In fact, it seems few of the 24 witnesses subpoenaed were even on board the Titan’s support vessel, the Polar Prince, for the final mission: Renata Rojas, an unpaid volunteer, and Tym Catterson, a contractor with experience of piloting submersibles.

Anonymous sources close to the investigation but not authorized to talk with the media told WIRED that the Coast Guard had approached some contemporary OceanGate staff and executives, and third-party suppliers, but was told that if compelled to appear they would assert their Fifth Amendment rights. That means that they could refuse to testify on the grounds that their responses might incriminate them or expose them to legal risk.

WIRED approached OceanGate and the hull manufacturers for comment. A lawyer for Janicki Industries, which cured and machined a portion of the hull, wrote that it was not participating in the hearings. WIRED did not receive replies from the others before publication.

There was speculation that former US Coast Guard rear admiral John Lockwood, who joined OceanGate’s board in 2013, would testify, but he is also missing from the list.

The absence of people who would appear to have relevant knowledge has caused consternation among former OceanGate employees and marine experts, who are skeptical that the full story of the Titan’s demise can be told without them.

“Personally, if I was in the Coast Guard, I’d bring them in and make them take the Fifth,” says Alton J. Hall Jr., a maritime lawyer. “They do have subpoena power, so I’m not really sure why they’re not.”

Melissa Leake, a Coast Guard public information officer and its deputy public affairs officer for the Atlantic area, noted that the Coast Guard does not comment on reasons for not calling specific witnesses. However, she denied that the Coast Guard did not subpoena certain individuals or organizations because they would plead the Fifth.

What the board has is a wealth of digital and physical evidence, such as data from previous dives and wreckage of the Titan recovered from the Atlantic seafloor, including some of its carbon fiber hull. One of the expert witnesses being called is a materials engineer from the National Transportation Safety Board’s Materials Laboratory.