 Bow of theTitanic
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Aug. 12, 2003 — The Titanic is quickly disintegrating, say explorers and scientists who have been watching the wreck closely since it was first found in 1985 two miles beneath the North Atlantic.
According to a report in The New York Times, divers who have visited the wreck in the past 10 years say the decay is accelerating, partly a natural process and partly man-made.
For instance, the crow's next is gone; the captain's cabin and the poop deck have collapsed; huge holes have opened in the ship's decks; and rusticles, brown icicles of rust that are suspended from iron plates, cover the hull in some places.
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Alfred McClaren, an oceanographer who has dived on the wreck recently, has put forth the theory that one "natural" cause for the decay is overfishing of the nearby Grand Banks. According to the paper, he says the overfishing has upset the food chain and caused explosion of tiny marine life that rains down on the ship, accelerating the rusting.
"The snow feeds the rusticles, and they become more active and extract more iron from the ship," D. Roy Cullimore, a Canadian microbiologist who has visited the wreck three times, told the paper.
The United States is huddling with France, the United Kingdom and Canada about how to preserve what's left of the famous cruise ship, the paper reported. And in June, NOAA sent down a team of scientists to assess the condition of the wreck and decide on its future.
But tourists are also taking their toll on the Titanic's remains. Paying up to $36,000 to dive on the wreck, they are leaving behind memorial plaques and plastic flowers. Ships belonging to salvage crews litter the seabed around the wreck with trash and beer cans, the paper said. Pirates are confiscating anything left to take.
In April 2001, NOAA released guidelines for research, exploration and salvage of the ship. But the guidelines — calling for things like no holes to be cut in the hull — are not legally enforceable.
At the time, NOAA said it thought the ship would "collapse to the ocean floor within the next 50 years, perhaps sooner." The purpose of the guidelines, the agency said, "is to discourage activities that would accelerate the ship's deterioration."
The Titanic sank on the night of April 14, 1912, when the opulent luxury liner hit an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York. More than 1,500 people died.
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