Divers discover reef ‘more amazing than a shipwreck’ near Titanic

The RMS Titanic It is undoubtedly the most famous shipwreck in the world. The wreck of this luxurious ship has captivated the minds of researchers, giving rise to numerous underwater expeditions, first to find it and then to find out everything possible about its fate. Despite the amount of exploration that has been carried out on the ship itself and its surroundings, researchers continue to obtain new information.

In 2022, a group of divers made an incredible discovery near a shipwreck that had been observed 26 years earlier, but until now no one had investigated.

Discovering the shipwreck

Initially, when the RMS Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, the location of the wreck was at best an estimate. It was known to have sunk off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, but the precise location remained a mystery. In the following years, multiple expeditions were organized to try to find it using sonar, but they all failed. It was not until 1985 that Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard finally located the titanic .

RMS bow Titanic photographed by the ROV Hercules during an expedition back to the shipwreck, 2004. (Photo credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Although at first they wanted to try to rescue the titanic, It has now been declared a historical heritage site and will remain at the bottom of the ocean due to its fragile state. Following its initial discovery, many more expeditions have traveled to the wreck, including those designed to recover artifacts for public display. The Titanic It has been visited by both divers and submariners who have been able to provide more details about the ship, as well as photographs of its place of residence.

A radar flash

It was during one of these expeditions that PH Nargeolet, a submarine pilot and diver, first recorded an anomaly on sonar. This created a mystery that was only solved 26 years later. When the dot appeared on sonar during the dive, its origin was unclear. It looked similar to the Titanic wreck on radar, leading divers to think that perhaps this was a second wreck located near the first, or that it could be some type of geological formation.

Nargeolet had to wait a long time to get an answer about what he had discovered. He finally obtained it when he joined an expedition funded by the OceanGate Foundation, which aimed to explore the area where the dot had first appeared. When asked about it, Nargeolet said: “We didn’t know what we would discover… I have been looking for the opportunity to explore this large object that appeared on sonar so long ago.”

What they discovered was not a shipwreck at all, but a fantastic deep-water rocky reef made up of different volcanic formations and corals. It is believed that it could be thousands of years old. Not only is it ecologically intriguing, hosting a variety of lobsters, fish and sponges, but it also lies at a staggering depth of 2,900 metres.

Finding something incredible

Murray Roberts, one of the researchers who participated in the expedition, said of the reef: “It is biologically fascinating. The animals that live there are very different from the animals found in other parts of the abyssal ocean. [Nargeolet] He did very important scientific work. He thought it was a shipwreck and it turned out, in my opinion, even more amazing than a shipwreck.”

Starting in November 2022, the team is analyzing images and videos from the dive to share them with the scientific community. This will help them better understand marine life at such great depths. It could be just the first of many findings, as this wasn’t the only spot Nargeolet identified on sonar years ago.

He hopes to conduct another expedition in the future to investigate a secondary point nearby. of the Titanic, one that indicates the presence of something even larger.