New footage of the RMS Titanic shipwreck has been released in higher video quality than ever before — and it’s intriguing, colourful and undeniably eerie.
Almost 40 years after the Titanic wreck was discovered, OceanGate Expeditions released 8K video from its most recent voyage to the ship located in the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean.
The ocean exploration company said the high-quality video will allow researchers and scientists to zoom in on video frames without compromising quality.
In a press release, OceanGate Expeditions wrote that several of the structures and “phenomenal colors” in the footage have never been seen before.
The video opens with footage of the ship’s iconic bow, covered in large, fragile stalactites of rust. Seemingly frozen in time, the ship’s portside anchor is also seen in the clip.
“We are seeing new details in this footage,” Rory Golden, an OceanGate Expeditions Titanic expert and veteran Titanic diver, said in the press release.
“For example, I had never seen the name of the anchor maker, Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd., on the portside anchor,” he continued. “I’ve been studying the wreck for decades and have completed multiple dives, and I can’t recall seeing any other image showing this level of detail.”
“It is exciting that, after so many years, we may have discovered a new detail that wasn’t as obvious with previous generations of camera technologies,” said Golden.
The last clip in the video shows one of the single-ended boilers that fell to the ocean’s floor when the Titanic split in two. Golden said it was this boiler that was first spotted when the Titanic wreck was discovered in 1985.
In the press release, PH Nargeolet, a veteran Nautile submersible pilot and Titanic diver, shared his excitement for the high-quality footage of various Titanic structures.
“Early in the video you can see the crane used for deploying the enormous 15-ton anchor still located on the deck of the shipwreck and the shackle that was originally attached to the main mast that has now collapsed,” he said.
“Later in the video you see three round structures along the inside of the railing. These are the triple fairleads that were used to feed the docking ropes to the bollards on shore to secure the ship to the dock when the Titanic was at port.”
OceanGate Expeditions claimed there was “dramatic evidence of decay” on the wreck, including where some of the Titanic’s rail has collapsed and fallen away from the ship.
The RMS Titanic, which had been called the “unsinkable ship,” hit an iceberg and sank on April 14, 1912, killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew members. The ship was travelling from Southampton, U.K. to New York City, but never completed its voyage.