Even then, its condition is likely to grow increasingly worse over time, she says. Expedition team leader Vescovo tells TIME that the shipwreck was actually in better condition than he expected. The fact that there are still many glass portholes intact amazed me, and really impressed me just how durable this ship is. Write to Gina Martinez at gina. By Gina Martinez. Vescovo also recently broke the world record for deep-diving with a recent descent 35, feet into the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest natural trench in the world The wreck of the Titanic has lain at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland since April , when it hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.
A bathtub, part of one of ship's cabins, photographed on the Atlantic Ocean seabed in Related Stories. Wear Black Every Day? And the poop deck, where passengers crowded as the ship sank, folded under itself. The gymnasium near the grand staircase has fallen in. And a expedition discovered that the captain's haunting bathtub, which became visible after the outer wall of the captain's cabin fell away, is gone. The company has outfitted its carbon fiber-and-titanium submersible with high-definition cameras and multi-beam sonar equipment, Rush said.
Charting the decomposition can help scientists predict the fate of other deep-sea wrecks, including those that sank during the world wars. OceanGate also plans to document the site's sea life, such as crabs and corals. Hundreds of species have only been seen at the wreck, Rush said. Another focus will be the debris field and its artifacts.
David Concannon, an OceanGate adviser who's been involved in various Titanic expeditions, said he once followed a trail "of light debris and small personal effects like shoes and luggage" for 2 kilometers. The expedition includes archaeologists and marine biologists. But OceanGate is also bringing roughly 40 people who paid to come along.
They'll take turns operating sonar equipment and performing other tasks in the five-person submersible. Obsessed with the Titanic since she was a kid, Rojas said she started studying oceanography in hopes of one day discovering the wreck. In August, divers visited the wreckage for the first time in 14 years. Their photos reveal that the ship has significantly deteriorated due to deep-sea currents and metal-eating bacteria.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. It will take a long time before the ship completely disappears, but the decomposition of the wreck is to be expected and is a natural process," Patrick Lahey, president and co-founder of Triton Submarines, told Business Insider.
Since Lahey had never visited the wreck before, he couldn't gauge wreck's condition based on personal observations. But many experts agree that the ship looks very different than it did during previous expeditions.
Deep-sea currents, salt corrosion, and metal-eating bacteria are whittling away the wreckage, which lies more than 2 miles under the ocean surface. Microbial biologist Lori Johnston told USA Today that much of the deterioration comes from a group of bacteria, named Halomonas titanicae after the ship, which are "working symbiotically to eat, if you will, the iron and the sulfur.
Henrietta Mann, the scientist who co-discovered these bacteria in , told Time that based on this new expedition footage, the Titanic has only 30 years left before it disappears. The speed of the Titanic's deterioration increases as the ship's upper levels crumble, Mann said.
One such collapse demolished one of the wreck's most famous sections: Captain Edward Smith's quarters. Now, the room and the bathtub can no longer be seen — they're lost in the inaccessible depths of the wreck. The recent Triton submarine footage will be used in an upcoming documentary film by Atlantic Productions. It won't be the first high-tech reconstruction of the Titanic wreckage — this degree panorama went on display in Leipzig, Germany two years ago.
But given the rate of the ship's erosion, the panorama is no longer accurate. For his part, Lahey said there was nothing surprising about the condition of the Titanic. Loading Something is loading. Email address.
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