Where Did the Titanic Sank and How Inhospitable Is It?

The ocean is so monstrously vast that it is believed that we know more about space than we do about the bowels of the sea, and for proof of this there is the area of the Atlantic where the Titanic sank that, although it has been explored, there is still much we do not know about the region because the pressure down there is so exacerbated that very few vehicles have managed to get there.

Where Is the Titanic?

The curiosity to cross the vast oceans goes back millennia when cultures like the Phoenicians or the Egyptians built the first ships to cross the impetuous seas. Since then, humanity has been experimenting, by trial and error, with how to cross the oceans of the globe, but among all the maritime history, the Royal Mail Ship Titanic (RMS Titanic) is perhaps the case of greater attention due to its sinking.

From the beginning, the Titanic captured the imagination of the world’s citizens for being the largest and most opulent ship of the time. It was presented as the best design in the history of navigation, and for that reason, it was thought to be unsinkable. However, a series of factors played against it, and on April 15, 1912, only four days after it sailed from the English port of Southampton, the Titanic sank in the Atlantic, where its remains remain today.

Divided into two main pieces, the bow, and the stern, the Titanic lies in the northern Atlantic Ocean some 740 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Although the coordinates where the accident occurred were known, the wreck was not discovered until September 1, 1985, by explorer Robert Ballard. It is now known that the bow of the ship, which is the largest and most intact section, is located at exactly 41°43′57′′ North and 49°56′49′′′ West, at a depth of 3,784 meters below the sea surface.

What Is the Titanic’s Wreck Site Like?

The region of the North Atlantic where the Titanic was found belongs to what oceanographers know as an ‘abyssal plain,’ which is characterized by being located between 3,000 and 7,000 meters deep. The sun’s rays do not penetrate this region, so life there is completely different from what we know and is dominated mainly by bacteria.

It could be said that the Titanic has become an exceptional laboratory where the wreckage converges with a large amount of life that has adhered to it, forming a reef of bacteria that are being studied by experts. The reef has also been crucial to better understanding how the ecosystem of the site affects the ship’s iron and its degradation.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the wreck of the Titanic is covered by rusty icicles called rusticles, which are “communities of bacteria that slowly devour the ship’s iron and give the wreck its molten appearance.” Comparisons of the growth of rusticles over time have helped scientists better understand the degradation of the Titanic, as well as that of other metal shipwrecks.

For this reason, in 2017, the Consolidated Appropriations Act was enacted, which states that “no person shall conduct any research, exploration, salvage, or other activity that physically alters or disturbs the wreck or the wreck site of the RMS Titanic.”

Story written in Spanish by Alejandra Martínez in Cultura Colectiva

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