For the primary time ever, a workforce of underwater explorers have captured detailed close-up sonar pictures of the legendary Andrea Doria almost 60 years after its sinking off the coast of Nantucket.

The sonar pictures are being collected by a workforce from OceanGate, an ocean exploration firm, which has launched the primary manned submersible dives to the wreck in additional than 20 years.

The Italian passenger liner sank with the lack of 51 lives in 1956 about 50 miles from Nantucket after colliding with the Swedish cruise liner MS Stockholm. The 697-foot-long wreck is sometimes called the “Mt. Everest of scuba diving” due its location and depth, which 1t a 240-feet is simply out of attain for divers on compressed air. In truth, through the years a complete of 16 divers have died attempting to succeed in the wreck.

“Five times more people have been to the top of Mt. Everest than have seen the Andrea Doria wreck site, so this expedition was a rare opportunity for our crew – all while expanding our knowledge of the ocean,” stated Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s Chief Executive Officer. “Using our five-person Cyclops 1 submersible, we were able to view the Andrea Doria area for nearly four hours, which is more than 10 times longer than scuba divers can.”

The objective of the dives is to make use of multi-beam sonar to survey the wreck, then digitally assemble scans right into a 3-D mannequin to assist illustrate the complete scope of the wreck and doc its present situation.

OceanGate says in that first expedition, the workforce capable of do 17 scans of the bow earlier than foggy situations and tough seas pressured them to cease.

“Given the conditions, we got as much time on the wreck as we could,” Rush stated. “We have nice respect for harsh ocean situations, and for the historical past of this notorious wreck, so guaranteeing the protection of our crew is at all times our prime precedence.

But the current expedition was the primary of many extra dives to come back. 

“We’ve always planned to revisit the Andrea Doria regularly to continue an ongoing mapping process, and what we captured will certainly serve as a benchmark for what we capture on future expeditions.”

Unfortunately for historians and underwater archeologists, the preliminary sonar pictures have recommended that the shipwreck could also be in worse situation that beforehand thought, with the bow of the vessel almost damaged off.

The AP has that story: