we just finished mapping in an area where we have been sent a potential wreck point from
the underwater archaeology branch at the naval history and heritage command. Finding a shipwreck
is actually really hard maritime archaeologists get us off on the right foot and sort of provide
a haystack and then we have to go through and sift and look for that needle and we have great
tools with the multi-beam but everything needs to sort of line up just right you need to have the
correct resolution in your multi-beam you need to have the ship be oriented perfectly you need
to have the topography be sort of background you can't have it be masked by any natural features.
This really has that true discovery feeling to it and it's really exciting i'm really excited
and yeah we'll put the rov down there and we'll find out i guess we'll see what we find.
Okay let's proceed with launch
pilots we're going over pilot copies
we have an object we're approaching it's about 12 meters away now
and then beyond it about 25 meters ahead of us is another much larger target
well it's not rocks so we're you know we're off to a good start
got visual
all right so archaeologists do we have enough insight to say that this is a shipwreck
well it's definitely a shipwreck and what i'm seeing here looks to be some of the
frames and that may be a trunk uh this is looking submarine. That is great news
oh yeah there are definitely painted numbers on there. So that's a confirm what you're seeing right
now on the side of the conning tower is the hull number originally as USS Muskallunge SS262 and US
Navy as of 1957 S14 Humaita of the Brazilian navy but you can see the numbers still tucked out in
paint there s 14. it's about as definitive as you can hope for in this kind of work
this vessel's service life was predominantly focused
during world war II in the pacific theater intercepting merchant vessels
it was ultimately sunk in 1968 as a target vessel used in target practice
off the coast of new york here and hasn't been seen since that time
the vessel is in 635 meters of water which is a little over six times
the depth of a gecko submarine
anytime we find one of these wrecks there's a variety of ways in which
it has meaning history that we can learn from
history that we might be inspired by our history that we don't wish to repeat
shipwreck can be habitat and certainly what we're seeing here today
is a wreck that has become like a hard coral reef
this is an incredible shot these corals are gorgeous
yeah i think i think even us archaeologists can appreciate that that's pretty extraordinary
by sharing this with the public makes all of us part of a global core of exploration
that connects us to the oceans themselves we're learning we're exploring, we're questing
we're looking on to beyond the next horizon into the depths of the ocean