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The wreckage of the Titanic, split into two parts at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, is slowly collapsing nearly 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) below the surface, but that’s not all. A sonar blip detected about 26 years ago revealed much more to this underwater area than previously thought.
Veteran Nautile submarine pilot and Titanic diver PH Nargeolet first picked up a blip with an echo acoustic device in 1996, but its origin remains unknown.
On an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic earlier this year, Nargiolet and four other researchers traveled to previously documented blip locations to search for the mysterious object it represented. Given the size of the blip, Narjolet thought he was looking for another shipwreck — instead, he found a rocky reef composed of various volcanic layers and home to lobsters, deep-sea fish, sponges, and thousands of species of coral. rice field. of age.
“It’s biologically fascinating. The animals that live there are very different from those that live in the deep sea,” says Professor of Applied Marine Biology and Ecology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, who also studies research. Murray Roberts, one of the “[Nargiolet]did a really important job in scientific research. He thought it was a shipwreck, but in my opinion it was even more amazing than a shipwreck.”
According to Roberts, the abyssal plain is a term used to describe the ocean floor at depths of 3,000 to 4,000 meters (about 12,000 feet), covering 60% of the Earth’s surface. A featureless, muddy seafloor believed to have little structure. Divers have several times observed rock formations on the plains. Since its recent discovery near the Titanic, Roberts now thinks such features may be more common than previously thought.
Rocky outcrops may also help explain how far sponges and corals travel across the ocean floor, which has always been a mystery to scientists. Within the muddy environments in which they are normally observed, there are few hard surfaces for these species to snag on to grow and reproduce.
“Sometimes they’re like, ‘How did they get there? They’re not long enough to get there,'” Roberts said. “But more than previously thought, I think these rocks and stepping stones will help us understand the distribution of these species across the ocean.”
The researchers are currently working on analyzing images and videos taken at the reef during dives and will share their findings to improve the scientific community’s collective knowledge of deep-sea life. Roberts also hopes to link this discovery to a broader Atlantic ecosystem project he leads called iAtlantic. This will enable further research and protection of vulnerable ecosystems within coral reefs.
There is another sonar blip near the Titanic, which Nargiolet hopes to identify on future expeditions. Between the wreckage of the Titanic and the newly discovered coral reef, it was recorded in the same survey he did years earlier. Now named Nargeolet-Fanning Ridge after him and mission specialist Oisín Fanning for the 2022 expedition. Nargeolet expects it to be even bigger than this reef, whatever it is.
OceanGate Expeditions and its foundation (which along with Fanning provided financial support for this year’s Nargeolet dive) will continue research work longitudinally of the Titanic and surrounding areas in 2023.
“The marine life…it was so beautiful. “I am very happy to continue watching Titanic,” she said.
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