- The Titanic wreck site continues to be a major attraction for the wealthy and adventurous.
- But experienced deep-sea explorers told Business Insider that there's nothing left to see there.
- Hot ocean vents and deep-sea coral reefs are less well explored and much more accessible, explorers say.
The Titanic may be one of the most famous and most easily identifiable wreck sites in the history of maritime navigation.
Business Insider also said the ship may be one of the most overrated deep-sea exploration vessels ever built.
More than a century has passed since the luxury liner Titanic sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but its legend endures. In large part, that's thanks to James Cameron's 1997 film, which made the ship the first blockbuster to gross over $1 billion at the box office. The film rekindled interest in the ship and created a fanbase that continues to this day. Who wants a Titanic-themed birthday celebration?
Then in 2023, the deaths of five crew members of Ocean Gate's Titan submersible during a dive to the wreckage site catapulted the iconic ship back to the forefront of the news cycle.
Despite the detailed documentation of the wreckage and the recent fate of the Ocean Gate submersible, the wealthy and well-funded continue to make the effort to dive 12,500 feet into the ocean just to see the site. Of the sinking in 1912.
Titan passengers paid up to $250,000 for a seat inside the submersible. Now billionaire real estate investor Larry Conner says he's planning a voyage to the Titanic.
Deep-sea explorers are wondering: why?
“People are trying to impress people.”
“This wreck is well documented,” submersible expert Carl Stanley told BI in a recent interview, “probably the best documented deep-ocean shipwreck.”
Stanley, owner of the dive tourism company Stanley Submarines, was one of many colleagues who warned OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush about the dangers of rushing to build a boat to take people to the Titanic.
For him, the desire of the wealthy to visit the wreck has less to do with a genuine passion for deep-sea exploration and more to do with the fame of the ship of the same name.
“Whatever the tourist market for Titanic is, I think it's very similar to the kind of clientele who would pay Sherpas to climb Everest,” Stanley said. Sherpas are an ethnic Nepalese group that live in the Himalayan mountains. Some climbers pay up to $15,000 per climb to hire a Sherpa guide, BI previously reported.
More than 330 people have died on the mountain since the early 1900s, including 107 Sherpas, according to the Himalayan Database.
Stanley said there are more dangerous but less traveled mountains and less deep but well-preserved wrecks, such as the Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic, which lies in relatively shallow water, about 400 feet below sea level. Near the Greek island of Kea.
“People are trying to impress people,” he said.
Guillermo Sonnlein, an OceanGate co-founder who left the company in 2013, agreed with Stanley.
While Sonnlein doesn't want to dismiss people's genuine passion for the famous luxury liner, he told BI in an interview that “I have no interest in the Titanic whatsoever.”
“One of the reasons I'd spoken to Stockton so often over the last few years was because he would always call me before an expedition and ask if I wanted to go on the Titanic,” he said.
“To be honest, I've never had any desire to go on the Titanic. I don't see the appeal,” Sonnlein said. “I think a big part of it is that, for me, I prefer exploration. It's been visited, documented and filmed. James Cameron did a fantastic job with it.”
Salt pools and unexplored blue holes
Stanley and Zonlein said they weren't particularly interested in the overall remains of the shipwreck, but rather were keen to explore the marine ecosystem.
“Hydrothermal vents, saltwater pools and deep-sea coral reefs are much more interesting than shipwrecks and can be reached at 2,000 to 5,000 feet rather than the 13,000 feet it took to get to the Titanic,” Stanley said.
Similarly, Sonnlein is interested in deep ocean trenches and hydrothermal vents, something Rush was also passionate about, he said.
Söhnlein They explain that they are “largely unexplored”, “play a key role in the planet's dynamics” and “probably harbor thousands of undiscovered and unknown life forms”.
Zonlein's company, Blue Marble Exploration, recently announced an expansion into Dean's Blue Hole, located about 660 feet below sea level in the Bahamas. From the surface.
“Dean's Blue Hole is a mystery to geologists who study underwater caves,” the Blue Marble Exploration website states. “It is the largest blue hole in the world, yet little is known about it, including how it formed over 15,000 years ago.”
The company added that it hopes to find the “remains” of people who have drowned in the Blue Hole “due to various misfortunes.”
It's unclear how many people have died at the site, the most notorious incident being that of an American freediver in 2013. According to The New York Times, Nicholas Mevoli attempted to break the freediving record by reaching 72 meters in one breath. He surfaced but died shortly thereafter.
