How many shipwrecks are there in the world? Does everything end up in graveyards of Indian cost?
It is estimated there are over 3 million #shipwrecks in our ocean floors. And World War two alone have resulted in over 15000 of shipwrecks. Even for today, about 50 odd ships go missing all over the world, although the majority of them end up reused in ship graveyards. As captains of our own ships, we should be prepared for the worst after all, and the best place to start would be stories from the past.
There are different groups of people who are interested in hunting down shipwrecks for a variety of reasons. Marine biologists, Treasure hunters, historians, even modern-day film makers and solo scuba divers, make a living out of these shipwrecks. After all it is not always negative to have shipwrecks. As we can imagine, since there had been ships and voyagers, there had been wrecks too, so the history goes even back into thousand years into the past. We will revisit some of these stories they have found over the years and learn what they teach us.
Of course, there would be much more damage to the environment at the time of a giant ship sinking. It may be due to the fire, spillage of oil and harmful chemicals, which lead to loss of thousands and millions of big and small marine lives, even after decades of such damage. As an example, the Express Pearl ship which caught fire at the SriLankan coastline back in 2020 had released three containers each with, 26000 kg weight of plastic pallets, to the environment according to the Sri Lanka's Marine Environmental Protection Authority (MEPA). And some of them will end up in the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch in years to come and live there over many years as micro plastics, continuously threatening life. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest of such a collection containing an estimated 45,000–129,000 Metric Tons of plastic as of 2018.
After initial havoc and the chaos in the deep ocean floors and sudden loss of life, ships become a part of the environment, and start to be engulfed and consumed by the environment itself. Over time the wreck itself provides a home for a large number of marine lives. Marine Biologists, and scientists still investigate how starting with microbiomes, the shipwrecks evolve into habitats of bigger and bigger animals, from crustaceans to schools of fish, from corals to mammals and sea turtles. #Nature seems to be engulfing and transforming everything it seems.
If we return back to our ships, it is a matter of time, next disaster happens to us, and it is pretty unpredictable too. But when such time comes, let's hope that is not the end of the story and there will be recovery and triumph and life after each and every shipwreck. Together we can reduce the impact and fasten the recovery, which is inevitable by nature.
Thank you for reading Positive and negative effects of Sunken ships and deep Shipwrecks
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