The submersible was traveling through international waters, Posobiec said, asking Kohnen if it would have been permitted to operate in US- or Canadian-owned waters.
Kohnen responded: "No, not the Coast Guard, in its jurisdictional authority, which is basically the people in charge of the coastal waters."
"The Coast Guard would require the vehicle to be certified," he said. "And so in addition, the classification or certification is optional. If you're building your own submersible, you don't have to class it. OceanGate was not making it to sell, so they had the option of not classing the vehicle."
Kohnen continued: "Since they were operating [in] international waters, they got around both as a loophole. And the question is, how do you control something like that? Well, it's an exception to an exception, and it's very unfortunate, but most of our industry here, we've had an exceptional record of a clean bill here of incidents for the last 50 years."
"And we know why: we pay a lot of attention, a lot of self-discipline...just to make sure we keep government at bay over here. Of course, it has to be some level of regulation. And I suspect we'll be having some discussion on how we do that. It's definitely an open loophole."
Earlier on Thursday, it was revealed that a debris field was discovered in the search for Titan, which contained five passengers on its journey to see the remains of the Titanic. A landing frame and rear cover was discovered at the site.
The unique structure of the submersible confirmed that the debris discovered was part of Titan.
The US Coast Guard confirmed shortly after that those aboard the Titan had died, as there was no way for them to survive the destruction of the pressure chamber.
The Titan was discovered approximately 1600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor.
Authorities do not believe that the bodies will be recovered. They also noted that it was not a collision with the Titanic that led to the destruction, but that it was an "implosion in the water column."
