Newfoundland university threw open its doors to Titanic dive operator, emails show

A research institute at Newfoundland and Labrador's Memorial University threw open its "proverbial doors" last year to the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible, less than a year before the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion while diving to the Titanic shipwreck.

A research institute at Newfoundland and Labrador's Memorial University threw open its "proverbial doors" last year to the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible, less than a year before the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion while diving to the Titanic shipwreck.

Emails obtained by The Canadian Press show officials with Memorial's Fisheries and Marine Institute signed an agreement with OceanGate in December allowing the company to store equipment with the university and promising that students and faculty would have opportunities "to join OceanGate expeditions to support research endeavours."

The memorandum of understanding also says the marine institute would show OceanGate's submersible to visitors in an effort to promote ocean literacy and the "blue economy."

The Titan submersible was last heard from on June 18, after it dropped into the North Atlantic on its way to the Titanic wreck site. Officials say its mother ship, the Canadian-flagged Polar Prince, lost contact with the small sub about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive. The descent typically takes about two hours.

After a frantic, days-long international search, a crew guiding a remotely operated vehicle spotted the submersible's wreckage about 500 metres from the Titanic's bow, almost four kilometres below the ocean's surface. OceanGate founder and chief executive officer Stockton Rush died along with the four passengers on board.

The emails obtained through an access to information request make no mention of concerns that had surfaced in the industry that Titan was unsafe and OceanGate was endangering its passengers, who paid a reported US$250,000 to dive to the Titanic. Nor were there questions about the company's public acknowledgment in 2019 that Titan hadn't been certified, as is standard practice in the industry. But they do reveal officials' enthusiasm to team up with OceanGate.

"On behalf of Angie, Joe and myself many thanks ... and consider the 'proverbial doors' of the Marine Institute at Memorial University are open!" Rob Shea, then the Marine Institute's vice-president, wrote in a July 9, 2022, email to Rush. Shea sent the note after visiting the Titan in St. John's harbour with Angie Clarke, the institute's associate vice-president of academics and student affairs, and Joe Singleton, the interim head of the institute's school of ocean technology, the emails show.