• The Titanic wreck is slowly degrading about 4,000 meters below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean.
• A 26-year-old sonar blip revealed this underwater area’s vastness.
• Nautile submersible pilot and Titanic diver Pierre Nargeolet discovered the blip in 1996.

The Titanic wreck is slowly degrading about 4,000 meters below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean. A 26-year-old sonar blip revealed this underwater area’s vastness.

P.H. In 1996, Nautile submersible pilot and Titanic diver Nargeolet discovered the blip on echo sounding equipment. Its origins are unknown.

Nargeolet and four other researchers searched the Titanic disaster earlier this year for the enigmatic object suggested by the blip. Nargeolet thought he was hunting for another wreckage, but he found a rocky reef with lobsters, deep-sea fish, sponges, and thousands-year-old coral.

Biologically fascinating. Murray Roberts, a professor of applied marine biology and ecology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and one of the expedition’s researchers, said the species there are significantly different from those in the abyssal ocean. “Nargeolet did crucial scientific work. He assumed it was a shipwreck, and it turned out, in my perspective, even more wonderful than a shipwreck.”

According to Roberts, 60% of Earth’s surface is the abyssal plain, the ocean floor at 3,000 to 4,000 meters. It may be a muddy, featureless seabed. Divers have seen simple rock formations. Roberts thinks similar qualities are increasingly widespread after the Titanic discovery.

Rocky places may also explain how sponges and corals migrate over the ocean floor, which has always puzzled scientists. These species need firm surfaces to grow and reproduce in their muddy environment.

“Sometimes they appear in areas we wonder, ‘Well, how did they get there? Roberts responded, “They die before they get there.” But if there are more of these rocky areas, these stepping stones, than we imagined, it could help us understand the dispersal of these species across the ocean.

The researchers are studying reef photographs and recordings from their dive to advance deep-sea life studies. Roberts aims to link this discovery to his iAtlantic Atlantic Ocean ecosystem project to research and conserve the reef’s delicate environment.

Nargeolet hopes to find another sonar blip near the Titanic on a future voyage. The Nargeolet-Fanning Ridge, named after him and the 2022 expedition’s mission expert Oisín Fanning, was recorded in the same survey he did years earlier between the Titanic wreck and the newly discovered reef. Nargeolet anticipates a larger reef.

OceanGate Expeditions and their foundation, which funded Nargeolet’s dive this year together with Fanning, will continue their longitudinal exploration of the Titanic and nearby locations in 2023.

Beautiful aquatic life. Nargeolet said, “I never expected to witness that.” “I’ll gladly look at the Titanic.”

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