Incredible spectacle: New footage of the Titanic shows the wreckage in the highest quality yet
The Mesaba, which, like the Titanic, was built in Belfast, avoided the iceberg that was fatal for the Titanic in 1912 and continued its voyage without a single scratch. The crew then sent a warning to the ship behind it, but it was not heeded. It then roamed the ocean until 1918, when it was sent to the bottom of the sea during the First World War by torpedoes from German submarines, reports the CNET website. Twenty people, including the ship’s captain, died in the accident, which occurred just 21 miles (34 km) from the Tuscar Rocks southeast of Rosslare Harbour.
Experts found its exact location thanks to multi-beam sonar, which enables non-contact depth measurement, CAD magazine writes. This instrument uses sound waves that allow it to map the sea floor in detail. Thanks to this, experts from Bangor University and Bournemouth University in Great Britain were able to accurately identify the ship.
New technology makes scientists’ work much easier. They use the vessel Prince Madog to explore. “We used to be able to dive only a few places a year and identify the wrecks with just our eyes,” explained maritime archaeologist Innes McCartney. Today, these procedures are a thing of the past.
A new way of exploring the seabed
The technology used by Prince Madog is said to have the potential to be as effective for marine archaeologists as the use of aerial photography is for archaeologists on land. “We can go to sea for maybe ten days at a time and just go from one wreck to another. We explored up to twenty-five of them a day,” says marine geologist Michael Roberts enthusiastically to CNN.
Wreck hunters found the destroyer Samuel B. Roberts, lying deeper than the Titanic
The new way of searching the bottom is also more economical. According to Roberts, the cost of exploring each location ranges between 22,000 and 30,000 crowns. “The unique capabilities of sonar have allowed us to develop a relatively inexpensive way to examine wrecks,” McCartney said. The results of the research can then be linked back to historical information by scientists. “And that without having to physically examine each location at a great cost,” he added.
The Prince Madog found a total of 273 wrecks in the Irish Sea, spread over seven and a half thousand square miles. Slovenia, for example, is comparably large. The found ships were scanned by scientists using Prince Madog and then compared with the British Hydrographic Office’s wreck database and other sources.
Among the wrecks found, according to information from the BBC station, are cargo ships, submarines, ocean liners and tankers.
Maritime Archeology in the New
While this technology has the potential to reveal the stories of all these lost ships, it’s not the only reason scientists have embarked on the quest. “We are also studying these wrecks to better understand how objects on the seafloor interact with physical and biological processes,” explained Roberts. He added that this can help scientists support the development and growth of the marine energy industry.
Source: Youtube
Experts are excited about the new technology. “It changes the way maritime archeology has been done,” McCartney said.
For example, many of the wrecks examined are in such deep water that there is no light near them. “A diver would never get pictures like we did. There’s so much sediment that you just can’t see everything,” Roberts said. “It’s a way to really effectively visualize something with sound that you can’t see with the naked eye — like an ultrasound during pregnancy,” he explained.
The project, in which they identify the lost wrecks, was not in the minds of the scientists from the beginning. Roberts is based at Bangor University in Wales, where he led sonar research in the university’s School of Ocean Sciences. For several years, he has worked with the marine renewable energy industry, researching the ocean’s influence on energy-generating devices.
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Shipwrecks have proven to be a valuable source of information in this area. “We knew we had a lot of shipwrecks just around the corner in the Irish Sea that could provide useful insights into what happens when things get to the bottom of the sea,” Roberts said.
It was only with the start of his collaboration with McCartney and his home university of Bangor that their hunt for forgotten wrecks on the seabed began. “McCartney was interested in using technology to identify shipwrecks,” Roberts said. From that moment on, the new team began to delve deeper and deeper into the unsolved mysteries to unravel their secrets.
People can read the details of all the until recently forgotten comebacks in McCartney’s new book, Echoes from the Deep.
The Titanic, about which many details have been known for many years compared to new wrecks, also recently underwent new research. Scientists managed to film the wreck of the Titanic in 8K resolution. It’s the highest quality yet and shows the ship in a light that people haven’t seen before, according to CNN.
Source: Youtube
