By 2030, Titanic Will Be Gone From its Watery Grave Due to Metal-Eating Lifeforms

In a first-of-its-kind environmental genomics analysis, a team of scientists plans to venture and develop a richer picture of biodiversity on and around the wreck of the Titanic.

The ocean exploration company OceanGate Expeditions and environmental genomics organization eDNAtec recently announced plans to gather water samples around the 1912 shipwreck of the Titanic and study the invisible lifeforms that are consuming it, Newsweek wrote. The explorers will go through depths to gain better understanding of the microscopic organisms that call it home.

"This is groundbreaking deep-sea research. The deeper you go into the ocean, the less knowledgeable we are. This study will give us an entirely different view of this one-of-a-kind habitat while also adding substantially to shared deep water DNA data sets," says marine biology expert Dr. Steve W. Ross.

The results shall serve as essential findings available to researchers, marine biologists, and scientists for future studies and comparison.

Life on the seafloor

Titanic had set sail from Southampton, U.K. to New York on April 10, 1912, and sunk five days later, killing about half of its passengers. Now, the shipwreck lies 13,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, hosting much more life than expected.

In fact, the wreck itself has become an entirely new ecosystem and served as an artificial reef for many organisms, including invisible lifeforms. "This includes invisible signs of both microscopic creatures and larger animals that leave traces of DNA in the water surrounding the Titanic. This research effort will contribute to conservation of the ecosystem of the wreck site," continues Dr. Ross.

Now covered in rusticles, communities of metal-eating bacteria are slowly eating away the ship's debris, and scientists predict that most of the wreck could be completely eroded by 2030. This pushes further efforts to document and, as much as possible, conserve the historical site and protect it from any more damage.

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"The extraordinary spectrum of species" in the deep water

In an effort to study the ecosystem around the Titanic before it becomes unrecognizable, OceanGate Expeditions conduct explorations to the wreck annually. This year, the expedition is conducted as a series of 8-day missions that begin and end in St. John's, Newfoundland, with a schedule that allows for up to five submersible dives on each mission, according to Ocean Gate Expeditions.

However, Lisa Dreher, of OceanGate Expeditions, said that although previous expeditions show an abundance of organisms, the observations are limited. "No expeditions have done a comprehensive survey of biodiversity on the wreck thus far," she said. Dreher also added that the mission is a "powerful approach" to survey biodiversity as it can detect all types and sizes of organisms, "from tiny plankton all the way up to large fish providing a complete overview of the ecosystem."

Dr. Mehrdad Hajibabaei, an internationally recognized expert in biodiversity genomics and Founder and CSO of eDNAtec claims that their advanced eDNA sequencing approach "will generate a complete view of organisms in an ecosystem using high-capacity sequencing platforms that generate billions of genomic sequences."