Rare Collection of Over 40 Shipwrecks Revealed in Mapping of Black Sea Landscape

A maritime archaeology expedition launched to map the submerged ancient landscape of the Black Sea has found a rare collection of over 40 shipwrecks, including those from the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires.

An international team, involving the University of Southampton’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology, has been surveying an area of submerged land that had been flooded when the water level rose after the last Ice Age. According to their press release, the primary aim is to “answer some hotly-debated questions about when the water level rose, how rapidly it did so and what effects it had on human populations living along this stretch of the Bulgarian coast of the Black Sea”.

The archaeological team launched their expedition from the Stril Explorer, an off-shore vessel equipped with some of the most advanced underwater survey systems in the world, including a Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) optimized for high resolution 3D photogrammetery and video, and another equipped with geophysical instrumentation and a laser scanner.