When trying to gauge just how far underwater imaging has come over the last few decades, look no further than this month’s cover shot of the RMS Titanic. The discovery of the wreck site in 1985—73 years after its fabled sinking in 1912—was a pivotal moment for ocean exploration and served as fresh impetus for developing novel technologies and techniques designed to shed light on a cold, dark, and often hostile frontier.
The first published images of the Titanic were caught using the towed sled ANGUS’s three 35-mm color cameras, which systematically fired every twenty seconds. No one aboard RV Knorr knew what had been photographed until the sled was hauled up, the cameras were unloaded, and the film was processed. From the 20,000 frames of film and some 8,000 scenes, grainy, blue-toned images of the wreck site— like that featured on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in December 1985—were beamed around the globe.
EARLY DEPICTION AND COVERAGE
However, the first comprehensive images of the wreck in its entirety relied on the masterful hand of Ken Marschall, who was able to piece together details in highly accurate paintings of the wreck in its eerie, photographically captured dark blue. In the decades that followed, larger, full-color images were taken from submersibles that dived the wreckage, such as those featured in Stephen Low’s IMAX film, Titanica, and James Cameron’s stunning footage of both the exterior and the interior of the Titanic. These images, when paired with computer graphics, brought a new sense of scale and context to the wreck; they brought the ill-fated ocean liner to life—as it steamed, as it sank.
DATA BRINGS DEFINITION
Further efforts to digitize the Titanic included a photomosaic made from 756 images captured by cameras on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in a 2004 NOAA mission that generated 400 gigabytes of data.
That was followed by the 2010 mission with two REMUS autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and a specially outfitted REMORA ROV that produced the first detailed sonar map of the entire wreck site. The mapping documented scattered wreckage within a mile by a 1 x 1.5- mile area, followed by higher resolution sonar maps of focused areas of the site that gave not only a visual sense but measurable data.
Then, thanks to the work led by William Lange, Evan Kovacs, and Maryann Morin from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Advanced Imaging and Visualization Laboratory, full-color images of the entire bow section, the stern, and selected concentrations of wreckage and artifacts were produced.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Then, a decade after the publication of the 2010 results, a new mission by Magellan Ltd., working with Atlantic Productions, captured 700,000 images to develop what has been heralded as an “exact 3D reconstruction” of the wreck. The images provide stunning clarity, and the three-dimensional data enable true measurement— the starting point in all scientific inquiry—and an entirely novel aspect to exploring a notoriously volatile and remote subsea environment, 3,800 meters below the surface.
As with most scalable technological progress, the associated costs of exploration below the waterline will continue to fall. The pace at which underwater imaging is advancing is a clear cause for celebration, anticipation, and discovery.
This story was originally featured in ON&T’s June 2024 issue. Click here to read more.
