Top 10 shipwrecks under water - shipwrecks found

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Off the coast of Mississippi, under 4,000 feet of water, a luxury yacht is slowly disintegrating. Marine creatures dart, cling and scuttle near the hull of the wreck, which has been lying undisturbed for 75 years.

But there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to this shipwreck and others, researchers have now shown — distinct assemblages of microbes inhabit the seafloor surrounding these structures, helping to turn shipwreck sites into artificial reefs rich in life.

Shipwrecks are trespassers on the bottom of the ocean, human-made structures decidedly out of their element. But a wreck’s intrusion gradually becomes welcome as various forms of marine life seek refuge among the steel and wood.

The macroscopic animals that inhabit shipwrecks are only there thanks to much smaller forms of life, said Leila Hamdan, a marine microbial ecologist at the University of Southern Mississippi.


That’s because microbes like bacteria and archaea coat surfaces in a sticky layer, a biofilm, that functions as a chemical and physical come-hither call for larger creatures such as barnacles and coral, Dr. Hamdan said. “A shipwreck can never become an artificial reef unless the microorganisms are there first.”

Her team is researching how the presence of a shipwreck affects microbial communities. This field of research, shipwreck microbial ecology, is a niche area of study that spans archaeology, biology, ecology and marine science, she said. “As far as we know, we’re the only ones doing it right now.”

In September 2018, Dr. Hamdan and her colleagues departed from Gulfport, Miss., aboard the research vessel Point Sur. Roughly 70 miles off the coast, the team lowered a remotely operated vehicle called Odysseus into the 80-degree water. Within 45 minutes, Odysseus’ seven thrusters had propelled it to the seafloor. There, it began emitting sonar pings to locate Anona, a shipwreck first discovered in the 1990s that the team knew was nearby.

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