Wreck Searching


The fantasy of finding sunken wrecks, historical monuments and artifacts may no longer be just a dream for enthusiastic archaeologists and historians.

Lost wrecks and historic sites once thought to be lost forever can be revisited and found with help from a StarFish Seabed Imaging System.

StarFish systems are a range of shallow water, high specification, portable side scan sonar systems; making high-tech digital seabed imaging available to everyone

There are significant advantages when using a StarFish system for locating wrecks. StarFish systems can cover exponentially more area than a standard echo-sounder or fishfinder, where the user would have to run directly over the wreck in order to locate it.

StarFish systems can capture wide sections of the seafloor on each run allowing large areas to be surveyed for evidence of wrecks in a relatively short time. The near-photographic quality digital images produced by StarFish systems can highlight debris that is often visible around wreck sites even if the wreck is buried or beyond range.Any visible trace left by a wreck or archaeological site on the seafloor landscape can be found using a StarFish system.

Analysis of StarFish images can help identify and possibly eliminate specific features of a wreck without the need to dive. Divers can also gain important information about a dive site, such as wreck orientation and potential hazards before entering the water.

Some typical examples of StarFish Seabed Imaging Systems' applications for wreck location / archaeological survey include...

  • Wreck and cargo discovery
  • Dive site navigation
  • Discover tell-tail wreck debris
  • Identify wreck orientation
  • Identify potential hazards before entering the water
  •  Identify possible man-made structures for investigation
  • Marine archaeology

 

Wreck Searching

UNESCO Facts and Figures

  • Over three million undiscovered wrecks are estimated to be spread across ocean floors
  • 65,000 are thought to have sunk since 1500 off North American coasts
  • Experts calculate that 850 ships - including 90 Spanish galleons and 40 Portuguese Indiamen - lie in the waters around the Azores
  • The Dictionary of Disasters at Sea lists 12,542 sailing and war vessels lost at sea between 1824 and 1962
  • Whole cites have disappeared under the waves, such as Jamaica's Port Royal, victim of earthquake in 1692
  • There is lot to discover in the North Arabian Sea i.e, Pakistan coastal waters has many wrecks which are still to be discovered.