Forget a dimly lit, high-priced cellar. It seems the best champagne these days can be found 20,000 leagues under the sea. 

Auctioneers last week sold 11 bottles of 170-year-old champagne, discovered in 2010 aboard a shipwrecked schooner off the coast of the Åland islands -- a Swedish-speaking, semiautonomous Finnish archipelago.

162 bottles were found aboard the ship, though only 79 were drinkable. Those 79, however, are fetching a fortune on the open market. In total, the 11 bottles -- six Juglar's (defunct since 1829), four Veuve Clicquots, and one Heidsieck -- sold 125,000 euros (nearly $188,000). The highest-priced Clicquot was auctioned for 15,000 euros (almost $19,000).

It turns out the bottom of the ocean can actually be the ideal place to store aged, sumptuous bubbly. Cloaked in dim lit, kept horizontally, and stored at high pressure under cold conditions, the bottles were perfectly maintained. 

“Despite the fact that it was so amazingly old, there was a freshness to the wine,” sommelier Ella Grussner Cromwell-Morgan told Aalandstidningen newspaper after a 2010 tasting. "It wasn’t debilitated in any way. Rather, it had a clear acidity which reinforced the sweetness."

All of this comes to show that if you're looking for the perfect spirit, you might want to try the open seas before you head to the local liquor store.  

Click here to check out the scenes from the stylish Veuve Clicquot Classic >

Please follow The Life on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

In June 1991, treasure hunters discovered some iron helmets, guns, jars and cannons about 15 feet underwater in the Bahamas.

Archaeologist Corey Malcom realized within moments of seeing the area that the marine salvagers had come upon an important shipwreck from the European colonization of America.  

The salvage group from St. Johns Expeditions, usually looking to make a profit, willingly gave up the discovery (a rare move among treasure hunters) to allow Malcom's team to examine the wreck.  

After more than a decade of research (still ongoing), Malcom's team of divers and conservationists believe the ship is the Santa Clara, a Spanish sailing ship from around 1564.

Thanks to Malcom and the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society and Museum, we have an amazing look at the discovery and restoration of this invaluable treasure.

The vessel was discovered on the southwestern edge of the Little Bahamas Bank, about 23 miles from Grand Bahamas Island.

Malcom's team worked on multiple boats for six to eight weeks at a time for six summers.

Malcom said that shipwreck sites aren't what people usually imagine because creatures have eaten the organic parts of the ship. What's found after centuries is a "flattened pancake" with ship parts buried under many feet of sand and sediment.

Please follow Business Insider on Twitter and Facebook.

A record 48-ton haul of silver bullion has been recovered from a World War II shipwreck off the coast of Ireland.

The treasure, worth 1.4 million troy ounces of silver, was found on the wreckage three miles beneath the Atlantic.

The operation to retrieve the 1,203 bars from the SS Gairsoppa was the heaviest and deepest underwater mission to remove precious metal from sunken vessels.

It was discovered last September and the metal was reportedly valued at around £155 million in today's prices.

The Gairsoppa, a cargo ship, sank in February 1941, 300 miles south-west of Galway in Ireland.

It was being used by the British Government as part of its War Risk Insurance programme.

The boat carried 83 crew and two gunners but only one officer survived the evacuation to reach the shore after it was hit by a German torpedo.

The silver belongs to the UK after the Government paid £325,000 to the owners of the cargo.

It was recovered by deep ocean exploration firm Odyssey Marine Exploration.

Greg Stemm, Odyssey chief executive, said: "Our capacity to conduct precision cuts and successfully complete the surgical removal of bullion from secure areas on the ship demonstrates our capabilities to undertake complicated tasks in the very deep ocean.

"This technology will be applicable to other modern shipwreck projects currently being scheduled as well as our deep ocean mineral exploration activities."

The haul has been moved to a secure location in the UK.

The firm will also try to rescue 600,000 ounces of insured silver believed to be on another shipwreck, the SS Mantola, 100 miles away from the Gairsoppa.

Odyssey said the recovered Gairsoppa haul was about 43 per cent of the insured silver bars, or a fifth of the total silver cargo which its research indicated may have been on board.

The deep sea operation will feature on television specials on the Discovery Channel in the US and Channel 5 in the UK.

Please follow International on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

By his own admission, Bob Ballard is a heretic. "If I were in Tunisia, I'd be toast," he said. He likes to disprove conventional wisdom, and throw out textbooks (metaphorically speaking).

In graduate school in the 1960s he was part of a wave of young researchers who established the existence of plate tectonics. In 1979 he found black smokers, vents on the ocean floor that spew out water from within the Earth, which wasn't previously thought possible. He has helped find new and unknown life forms around deep sea vents, which "threw out the textbook" on biology and the origin of life, which was previously thought to have originated from energy captured from sunlight.

He also discovered the wreckage of the Titanic deep on the Atlantic Ocean floor, as well as a whole slew of other shipwrecks.

Now he's the host of a new five-part series on the National Geographic Channel called "Alien Deep." The show, which premieres at 7 p.m. Eastern/Pacific today (Sept. 16), examines never-before-seen ocean marvels, from deep sea vents hosting unique life to ancient shipwrecks. Along the way he's joined by scientists, explorers and even astronaut Buzz Aldrin, to debate whether it makes more since to live on Mars or on the ocean.

OurAmazingPlanet sat down with Ballard to learn more about his new project.

OurAmazingPlanet: What was the coolest thing about doing this show?

Bob Ballard: Doing a whole series. I started working with National Geographic in 1979 and I think I've done about 35 specials before, but never a series. The producer calls it, "Carl Sagan with gills." 

I learned a lot — it was like going back to graduate school. In the show I went on a sub that's basically an underwater airplane called Deep Flight. That was kind of spooky. When you get on you put on a harness, because it rolls [like a plane]. You fit in like a glove. You can't move any part of your body, except your hand to scratch your nose.

OAP: What sort of things did you learn in filming the show?

BB: One thing, is that there's been an increase in the number of rogue waves. [The insurance company] Lloyd's of London has increased its insurance policies on ships because of this. What's happening with global warming is that the Earth is getting energized, hurricanes are going faster, etc. And you're seeing that reflected in more rogue waves. Most ships that vanish without a trace are due to rogue waves.

To explain what a rogue wave is: when you have a storm, you have these swells that migrate away. Eventually the waves meet. Normally they cancel each other out. But periodically, in a spot, they add up, and sometimes you can get three of them, all converging. That's a rogue wave.

I experienced one when I was very young on my first cruise.

OAP: What happened?

BB: On my first cruise, there were 40-feet swells. You'd go up and see all [gray] sky, and then back to staring into the ocean. For two days, there's nothing to do, except sleep and try to eat. I was up on the bridge. And all of the sudden, there's this wall (of water), and I thought: 'We aren't going over that. It's too steep.' And it just crashes. It's called taking green water. That means you're underwater and you're flooding and the question is: Do you get out before you flood totally? Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. Fortunately for me I was able to get out. That was 52 years ago. I don't want to go through another one.

In the show they actually document one. It'll ruin your day.

OAP: What was the hardest thing about filming the show?

Convincing people to do it. I have two fears in my business:  1. They won't fund me.  2. Oh my God—they did. You're worried that nobody will back you, but then when they do, you have to deliver.

OAP: What was the most difficult technical challenge in filming the show?

BB: To deliver the best mind in the world to a spot at the bottom of the ocean, with our telepresent technology [in which people can remotely see what Ballard's remotely operated vehicle sees, and offer their advice.]

 Recently we found an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Cyprus. We called up a [Bronze Age historian] and he said: Stop. This is Hellenistic. This is from the time of Alexander the Great. [Image Gallery: Shipwreck Alley's Sunken Treasures]

The ability to get the greatest minds to instantly access this stuff is critical.

OAP: I understand you explored deep sea vents in the show. What did you find?  

BB: We found another world. What I like doing is throwing text books away.

When I was a geology student, I was taught the old school of geology. I had to memorize a whole lot of crap. I was part of the revolution in Earth sciences, where we knew more than the professors, which was dangerous because you didn't want to embarrass them. How'd you like to defend your Ph.D. with a professor that doesn't believe you?

OAP: Is that what happened to you? 

BB: Yes. They didn't believe in plate tectonics, so you had to gingerly get around that. So, we threw the geology book out the window.

Then to biology: We were taught all life on earth was due to photosynthesis. Baloney. We found a life system that completely defied this. Instead of living off the energy from the sun, we found a system that lived in total darkness off the energy of the Earth.

We then found black smokers blasting off on the bottom of the ocean in 1979. We discovered that water actually goes into the planet. The entire volume of the ocean goes into and out of the Earth every 6-8 million years.

OAP: Will people ever live in the ocean?

 BB: Not in the ocean; we're not fish. But on it. We only live on 18 percent of the planet. Why not live on 100 percent? We can greatly increase the ocean's productivity by being ranchers and farmers. In the show we show people who are raising fish in the sea on soybeans.

Right now we are hunter-gathers, catching apex predators. We can make the ocean much more productive through the use of aquaculture.

OAP: When you went to the deep sea vents, did you find new types of life?

BB: Every day.

OAP: What was your favorite?

BB: This crazy crab with a hairy-chest. It grows food on the hair on its chest. And there are mounds of them. My colleagues named it after David Hasselhoff. [World's Freakiest Looking Animals]

OAP: The ship you found — was that the only one?

BB: We found about 50. We found more ancient shipwrecks than anybody in the world.

OAP: What was the most precious cargo you found?

BB: Human remains. Finding the ancient mariners, preserved.

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter@Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

• Strangest Places Where Life Is Found on Earth
• Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench
• The World's Biggest Oceans and Seas

Please follow Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Dutch and Belgian air sea rescue and coastguard have recovered five bodies and have given up hope of finding survivors among the six crew members still missing from the sinking of the Baltic Ace.

A Dutch aircraft and two helicopters, including a Belgian Seaking, continued the search for the missing men on Thursday morning.

"With these temperatures the average survival time in the water is half an hour," said Colonel Peter Van den Broucke of the Belgian air force

The rescue operation was resumed after it was called off at 02.00am CET today, over six hours after the collision between the Baltic Ace car carrier cargo ship and the Corvus J, a container vessel.

Human error has been blamed for the collision between the two vessels which led to the sinking of the Baltic Ace, a Bahamas flagged ship, with a crew of 24 Polish, Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Filipino sailors.

Five Poles are among the 11 dead or missing crew members. The 13 survivors were all said to be suffering from hypothermia after being plucked from freezing 11-foot waves by Dutch and Belgian rescuers.

Janusz Wolosz, second secretary at the Polish embassy in The Hague, told AFP that 11 of the 24 crew were Polish, of whom six have been saved, including the captain.

Four Poles including, the captain, have been taken to hospital in Belgium, another to a hospital in Rotterdam and the sixth is being treated on a rescue ship.

None of the 12 crew on board the Corvus J, which was sailing from Scotlandﾒs Grangemouth to Antwerp, were injured and the vessel left the scene of the collision under its own power after assisting rescuers.

The Baltic Ace was carrying 1400 cars, most of them Mitsubishis from Japan and Thailand, from Zeebrugge to Kotka in Finland.

The ship's managing company has suggested that human error was to blame for the sinking which was in international waters, sparking a debate over the authority with the jurisdiction to investigate which vessels failed to spot the other in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

"This incident took place out of our territorial waters," said Jos Klaren, a spokesman for the Dutch police.

"We are discussing with the prosecutor's office whether it is part of our jurisdiction."

The collision took place 35 nautical miles (40 miles) off the Dutch Zeeland coast, the Baltic Ace cargo freighter sank almost immediately.

The wreck, which is not in deep water, on the intersection of two busy shipping routes is currently patrolled by a Dutch coastguard ship to warn other vessels.

There are around 24 serious incidents in the Rotterdam North Sea area every year, the Dutch national news agency ANP reported, around half of them collisions.

A Dutch fishing boat in April 2005 netted a Second World War bomb that killed three fishermen when it exploded on board their vessel.

In November 1994 a bulk carrier hit the trawler Larissa in the busy Dutch shipping route, killing six crew and the captain.

SEE ALSO: 10 Of The Deadliest Boat Disasters Of All Time

Please follow Getting There on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

In January, the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck a rock of the shore of Isola del Giglio, in the Mediterranean.

30 people on board the largest passenger wreck of all time lost their lives; two are still missing. Nearly a year later, the wreck is still sitting off the Italian coast, mostly submerged.

Because the Costa Concordia is in a nationally protected marine park and coral reef, it must be removed from the area before it can be dismantled, posing countless difficulties.

In a report on the efforts to remove the wreck, 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl visited the site and recounted the remarkable salvage operation, which has a $400 million price tag.

Not only is it the riskiest, most complicated, and most expensive salvage plan ever undertaken, but no one is sure if it will work.

The ship weighs 60,000 tons and is filled with seawater.

It is sitting on two underwater mountain peaks. 65 percent of it is below the surface.

The wreck is an official crime scene.

Please follow Getting There on Twitter and Facebook.

One-hundred and fifty years ago, the USS Hatteras, a 210-foot, iron-hulled Navy ship, was sunk by a Confederate ship about 20 miles off the coast of Galveston, Texas. The Hatteras was the only Union warship sunk in combat in the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War.

Today, the ship sits 57 feet underwater and is largely intact, though mostly trapped by mud and sand.  

Last September, however, hurricanes and storms moved some of the sand and sediment that covered the wreckage.

A team from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration hustled to get three-dimensional sonar scans of the vessel before it was buried again.  

In addition to giving the public an unprecedented 3-D view at the wreck, the more detailed view will help archaeologists plan for the ship's long-term preservation.

The Hatteras, located in federal waters administered by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, is still U.S. Navy property. The shipwreck is protected by the Sunken Military Craft Act as a war grave since two Hatteras crew members that went down with the ship are still thought to lie inside the vessel.  

The 3-D scans show that most of one paddlewheel survived and that the ship's stern and rudder are sticking up from the sand. 

It also plots damage "to engine room machinery and the ship's paddlewheel shaft, which seems to have bent when the ship capsized and sank after being shot full of holes,"according to a NOAA press release. 

"The engine room spaces were a dangerous place in the battle," James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries said in a statement. "Cannon fire severed steam lines and filled these spaces with scalding steam. Fires broke out, and yet the crew stayed at their post to keep the ship running and fighting, and in here, two of them paid the ultimate price."

Check out a 3-D sonar video of the shipwreck below. The colors are used to differentiate between various types of machinery, Delgado tells us. 

Head over to NOAA to see more photos of the Hatteras. 

SEE ALSO: Photographer Captures Incredible Human Side Of Animals

Please follow Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

An oblong crystal found in the wreck of a 16th-century English warship is a sunstone, a near-mythical navigational aid said to have been used by Viking mariners, researchers said on Wednesday.

The stone is made of Iceland spar, a transparent, naturally-occurring calcite crystal that polarizes light and can get a bearing on the Sun, they said.

It was found in the remains of a ship that had been dispatched to France in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I as a precaution against a second Spanish Armada but foundered off the island of Alderney, in the Channel.

British and French scientists have long argued that the find is a sunstone -- a device that fractures the light, enabling seafarers to locate the Sun even when it is behind clouds or has dipped below the horizon.

Sunstones, according to a theory first aired 45 years ago, helped the great Norse mariners to navigate their way to Iceland and even perhaps as far as North America during the Viking heyday of 900-1200 AD, way before the magnetic compass was introduced in Europe in the 13th century.

But there is only a sketchy reference in ancient Norse literature to a "solarsteinn," which means the idea has remained frustratingly without solid proof.

In a study published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, investigators carried out a chemical analysis on a tiny sample, using a device called a spectrometer, which confirmed that the stone was a calcite.

The stone is about the size of a small bar of soap whose edges have been trimmed at an angle. In technical terms, its shape is rhombohedral.

It is milky white in appearance, and not transparent, but the new experiments show that this is surface discolouration, caused by centuries of immersion in sea water and abrasion by sand, the study said.

Using a transparent crystal similar to the original, the scientists were able to follow the track of the setting Sun in poor light, with an accuracy of one degree. In a second experiment, they were able to locate the Sun for 40 minutes after sunset.

Other factors provide evidence that this is a sunstone, according to the investigation, led by Guy Ropars of the University of Rennes, in France's western region of Brittany.

The crystal was found in the wreckage alongside a pair of navigation dividers. And tests that placed a magnetic compass next to one of the iron cannons excavated from the ship found that the needle swung wildly, by as much as 100 degrees.

Put together, these suggest the sunstone may have been kept as a backup to a magnetic compass.

"Although easy to use, the magnetic compass was not always reliable in the 16th century, as most of the magnetic phenomena were not understood," says the study.

"As the magnetic compass on a ship can be perturbed for various reasons, the optical compass giving an absolute reference may be used when the Sun is hidden."

The authors also note previous research that some species of migrating birds appear to have used polarized light from the sky as a navigational aid or to recalibrate their magnetic compass around sunrise and sunset.

How does the sunstone work?

If you put a dot on top of the crystal and look at it from below, two dots appear, because the light is "depolarised" and fractured along different axes.

You then rotate the crystal until the two points have exactly the same intensity or darkness.

"At that angle, the upward-facing surface of the crystal indicates the direction of the Sun," Ropars told AFP in an interview in 2011, when preliminary research about the Alderney stone was published.

Please follow Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

A great superpower, weakened by economic calamity at home and staggering under the debt from years of war in the Middle East, finally collapses.

A new political best-seller, or an apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster? Neither — it's the story told by a 1622 shipwreck whose treasures were desperately needed to shore up the finances of the struggling Spanish Empire.

The galleon Buen Jesus y Nuestra Senora del Rosario was one of 28 ships in the Tierra Firme fleet; all were sailing from the New World back to Spain, laden with colonial treasures, when they were struck by a powerful hurricane off the Florida Keys.

Eight of the ships sank, killing some 500 people and delivering a deathblow to an imperial power, effectively closing the curtain on the Golden Age of Spain. [Disasters at Sea: 6 Deadliest Shipwrecks]

The shipwreck "is the most important Spanish galleon to be found because of what its loss meant," Sean Kingsley, a marine archaeologist who has been studying the wreck, told The Times (U.K.).

"Its loss broke the Bank of Madrid at a time when there was 300 percent inflation in Spain, and it was in serious debt for its endless wars," Kingsley said. "Spain never recovered."

The ship's bounty is now on display at the Tampa, Fla., headquarters of Odyssey Marine Exploration (the outfit that recovered the treasure), the Telegraph reports.

The findings are a reflection of the dazzling wealth of Spain's colonial outposts: more than 6,000 pearls, some of which were the diameter of a nickel when harvested; silver coins bearing Spain's imperial stamp; bars of almost-pure gold; and long strands of glittering gold necklaces.

Along with these treasures, the shipwreck also yielded more prosaic reminders of everyday life in the colonial era. Parrot feathers recovered from the wreck reveal the birds' value as colorful, talkative pets. Ceramic jars held olives and other food for the long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.

Though the shipwreck was first discovered in 1965 when shrimp fishermen pulled up pottery and other artifacts in their deepwater nets, at 1,300 feet (405 meters) below the surface, recovery wasn't feasible.

But in later years, by using a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, archaeologists were able to begin the slow recovery process from aboard the research vessel Seahawk.

The excavation of treasure and artifacts from the wreck of the Buen Jesus y Nuestra Senora del Rosario is detailed in Kingsley's new book, "Oceans Odyssey 3: The Deep-Sea Tortugas Shipwreck, Straits of Florida: A Merchant Vessel from Spain's 1622 Tierra Firme Fleet" (Oxbow Books, 2013).

Follow Marc Lallanilla on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

• History's Most Overlooked Mysteries
• In Photos: Diving for Famed Roman Shipwreck
• Shipwrecks Gallery: Secrets of the Deep

Please follow Science on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Setting a new record for the deepest and largest metal recovery from a shipwreck, treasure hunters aboard the Odyssey Marine Exploration have brought 61 tons of silver bullion to the surface.

Delving three miles below the surface off the Galway coast the silver bullion was taken from the SS Gairsoppa, a 412-foot steel-hulled British cargo ship.

It sank in February 1941 after it was hit with a torpedo from a Nazi U-boat.

The recovery consists of 1,574 silver ingots weighing about 1,100 ounces each or almost 1.8 million troy ounces in total.

Including the silver recovered in 2012, Odyssey has now recovered 2,792 silver ingots from SS Gairsoppa, more than 99 percent of the insured silver reported to be aboard.

Odyssey will get to keep 80 per cent of the salvaged silver under its contract with the UK Department for Transport.

"This was an extremely complex recovery," said Greg Stemm, Odyssey's chief executive officer. "To add to the complications, the remaining insured silver was stored in a small compartment that was very difficult to access."

Here are some of the images from the discovery:

Find Us On Facebook — Business Insider: Science

Join the conversation about this story »

Early this morning in Italy, salvage workers finished flipping the capsized Costa Concordia upright, pulling the ship off underwater rocks for the first since since it crashed there in January 2012.

The resulting photos are amazing, but it will be more than two years before workers are done with the job.

The righting of the ship — a process called "parbuckling"— was only step three out of five.

Step one was to stabilize the wreck. Step two included building an underwater platform for it to rest on once upright, and attaching a series of enormous, hollow steel boxes onto the exposed side of the ship.

Step three was parbuclking. Now that the ship has been turned and is resting on the platform, at a depth of about 100 feet, it's time for step four: welding 15 more steel boxes — called sponsons or caissons — onto the long submerged starboard side.

"Refloating" is the fifth and final step of "The Parbuckling Project." The sponsons on each side of the ship will have water in them, which will be pumped out with a pneumatic system after they are all installed. Once empty, they should provide enough buoyancy for the water-filled ship to float up off the platform, rising to a depth of about 60 feet. That will happen in a few months, after prep work.

Then the Costa Concordia will be towed away and cut up for scrap, a process that will take two years, according to CBS.

Here are the sponsons on the port side, before the ship was parbuckled:

And a rendering of the ones to be installed on the newly exposed side of the ship:

SEE ALSO: They've Turned Over The Costa Concordia And The Pictures Are Nuts

Join the conversation about this story »

Certainly the divers charged with recovering the bodies of sailors lost in a 3-day old shipwreck never expected to find a man alive.

The Jascon 4 tug had been guiding a Chevron oil tanker off the Nigerian coast in high seas when it capsized. The other 11 souls on board were locked in their rooms to keep safe from pirates, Nicole Pryor of New Zealand web publication Stuff reports.

Harrison Okene, the ship's cook, survived in an air bubble when he found his way to the bathroom.

From Stuff:

Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a 1.2-metre-high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly rising from the ceiling of the tiny toilet and adjoining bedroom where he sought refuge, until two South African divers eventually rescued him.

The video just surfaced on the web recently. It shows the diver searching for bodies and coming upon a terrified and visibly distraught Okene.

"I was very, very cold and it was black. I couldn't see anything," Okene told Stuff. "But I could perceive the dead bodies of my crew were nearby. I could smell them. The fish came in and began eating the bodies. I could hear the sound. It was horror."

Here's the moment the controller (heard audibly over the microphone) and diver find Okene.

The controller — quite clinically — thinks at first they've just found a body. But then the hand reaches out and grabs the diver.

"He's alive, he's alive!" The controller yells. "Hold him there, OK? Hold him there."

Then the diver surfaces to reveal the air bubble and a ghostly Okene.

"Just keep him there, keep him calm, OK? Just reassure him, pat him on the shoulder," the controller says. "Just reassure him, give him a thumbs up, reassure him."

The recovery team then figures they'll fit him with scuba gear and slowly bring him up the 30 meter depth.

The rest is history: now Okene, 29, is living well with his family.

Here is the entire video:

Join the conversation about this story »

The wreck of the Costa Concordia — which crashed on underwater rocks off the Italian coast in January 2012 — will finally be towed away in June, officials said at a press conference today.

Ports in Italy, France, Turkey, Britain, and China are bidding for the right to dismantle the nearly 1,000-foot long ship for scrap, according to the Wall Street Journal. The choice will be made in March.

In September, salvage workers successfully flipped the capsized ship upright. Since then, it has been resting on an underwater platform, at a depth of about 100 feet. Workers have attached 15 enormous, hollow steel boxes — called sponsons or caissons — to the port side of the ship.

Now that it's upright, they will attach 15 more sponsons on the formerly submerged starboard side. This spring, all 30 will be drained of water. Empty, they will provide enough buoyancy for the ship to float up off the platform, to a depth of about 60 feet.

Then the Costa Concordia can be towed away, and Italy's Isola del Giglio can finally say goodbye to the eyesore.

Cutting the ship up for scrap will take two years, according to CBS.

32 people died after the ship crashed, and Captain Francesco Schettino is on trial for alleged manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning the ship, according to WSJ.

SEE ALSO: The $37 Million 'Apostrophe' Luxury Yacht Is Overflowing With Art Deco Style

Join the conversation about this story »

The Bermuda Triangle is a large area of ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Over the last few centuries, it’s thought that dozens of ships and planes have disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the area, earning it the nickname “The Devil’s Triangle.”

People have even gone so far as to speculate that it’s an area of extra-terrestrial activity or that there is some bizarre natural scientific cause for the region to be hazardous; but most likely, it’s simply an area in which people have experienced a lot of bad luck—the idea of it being a “vortex of doom” is no more real than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster (see The Origin of the Bigfoot Legend and The Origin of the Loch Ness Monster).

The Bermuda Triangle’s bad reputation started with Christopher Columbus. According to his log, on October 8, 1492, Columbus looked down at his compass and noticed that it was giving weird readings.

He didn’t alert his crew at first, because having a compass that didn’t point to magnetic north may have sent the already on edge crew into a panic. This was probably a good decision considering three days later when Columbus simply spotted a strange light, the crew threatened to return to Spain.

This and other reported compass issues in the region gave rise to the myth that compasses will all be off in the Triangle, which isn’t correct, or at least is an exaggeration of what is actually happening as you’ll see. Despite this, in 1970 the U.S. Coast Guard, attempting to explain the reasons for disappearances in the Triangle, stated:

"First, the “Devil’s Triangle” is one of the two places on earth that a magnetic compass does point towards true north. Normally it points toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 20 degrees as one circumnavigates the earth. If this compass variation or error is not compensated for, a navigator could find himself far off course and in deep trouble."

Of course, despite this now being repeated as an explanation for disappearances in the Triangle on numerous documentaries and articles since then, it turns out magnetic variation is something ship captains (and other explorers) have known about and had to deal with pretty much as long as there have been ships and compasses. Dealing with magnetic declination is really just “Navigation by Compass” 101 and nothing to be concerned about, nor anything that would seriously throw off any experienced navigator.

In 2005, the Coast Guard revisited the issue after a TV producer in London inquired about it for a program he was working on. In this case, they correctly changed their tune about the magnetic field bit stating,

"Many explanations have cited unusual magnetic properties within the boundaries of the Triangle. Although the world’s magnetic fields are in constant flux, the “Bermuda Triangle” has remained relatively undisturbed. It is true that some exceptional magnetic values have been reported within the Triangle, but none to make the Triangle more unusual than any other place on Earth."

The modern Bermuda Triangle legend didn’t get started until 1950 when an article written by Edward Van Winkle Jones was published by the Associated Press. Jones reported several incidences of disappearing ships and planes in the Bermuda Triangle, including five US Navy torpedo bombers that vanished on December 5, 1945, and the commercial airliners “Star Tiger” and “Star Ariel” which disappeared on January 30, 1948 and January 17, 1949 respectively. All told, about 135 individuals were unaccounted for, and they all went missing around the Bermuda Triangle. As Jones said, “they were swallowed without a trace.”

It was a 1955 book, The Case for the UFO, by M. K. Jessup that started pointing fingers at alien life forms. After all, no bodies or wreckage had yet been discovered. By 1964, Vincent H. Gaddis—who coined the term “Bermuda Triangle”—wrote an article saying over 1000 lives had been claimed by the area. He also agreed that it was a “pattern of strange events.” The Bermuda Triangle obsession hit its peak in the early 1970s with the publication of several paperback books about the topic, including the bestseller by Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle.

However, critic Larry Kusche, who published The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved in 1975, argued that other authors had exaggerated their numbers and hadn’t done any proper research. They presented some disappearance cases as “mysteries” when they weren’t mysteries at all, and some reported cases hadn’t even happened within the Bermuda Triangle.

After extensively researching the issue, Kusche concluded that the number of disappearances that occurred within the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t actually greater than in any other similarly trafficked area of the ocean, and that other writers presented misinformation—such as not reporting storms that occurred on the same day as disappearances, and sometimes even making it seem as though the conditions had been calm for the purposes of creating a sensational story. In short: previous Bermuda Triangle authors didn’t do their research and either knowingly or unintentionally “made it up.”

The book did such a thorough job of debunking the myth that it effectively ended most of the Bermuda Triangle hype.

When authors like Berlitz and others were unable to refute Kusche’s findings, even the most steadfast of believers had difficulty remaining confident in the sensationalized Bermuda Triangle narrative. Nevertheless, many magazine articles, TV shows, and movies have continued to feature the Bermuda Triangle.

Because the number of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle is no greater than any other similarly trafficked area of the world’s oceans, they don’t really need an explanation. But if you’re still convinced that the Triangle is a ship graveyard, relative to other regions that get around the same number of travelers, here are some natural explanations from the Coast Guard to combat some of the “alien” and other fantastical theories.

"The majority of disappearances can be attributed to the area’s unique features. The Gulf Stream, a warm ocean current flowing from the Gulf of Mexico around the Florida Straits northeastward toward Europe, is extremely swift and turbulent. It can quickly erase any evidence of a disaster.The unpredictable Caribbean-Atlantic storms that give birth to waves of great size as well as waterspouts often spell disaster for pilots and mariners.(Not to mention that the area is in “hurricane alley.”) The topography of the ocean floor varies from extensive shoals to some of the deepest marine trenches in the world. With the interaction of strong currents over reefs, the topography is in a constant state of flux and breeds development of new navigational hazards.Not to be underestimated is the human factor. A large number of pleasure boats travel the water between Florida’s Gold Coast (the most densely populated area in the world) and the Bahamas. All to often, crossings are attempted with too small a boat, insufficient knowledge of the area’s hazards and lack of good seamanship."

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

• 12 Historic Scientific Hoaxes
• The Curious Case of Alien Hand Syndrome
• Why Area 51 is Thought by Some to Contain Aliens
• People in Columbus’ Time Did Not Think the World was Flat
• When Christopher Columbus Used His Knowledge of a Lunar Eclipse to Trick Natives Into Giving Him Supplies

Bonus Facts:

• Whatever the rumours might have you believe, insurance companies don’t actually charge higher premiums for shipping in the Bermuda Triangle.
• Another mysterious “triangle” is the Michigan Triangle—an area stretching between Michigan and Wisconsin over the centre of Lake Michigan where disappearances have occurred. One disappearance was Captain George R. Donner who supposedly simply vanished from his cabin on the O.S. McFarland as it carted coal to Wisconsin. On April 28, 1937, his second mate went to tell him they were approaching port, but no one could find him anywhere aboard the ship. In another instance, a plane was flying above the triangle and *apparently* just disappeared. Small amounts of debris were found floating in the water, but the rest of the wreckage and bodies of passengers weren’t found. If you guessed that little credence is given to this triangle being an area of unusual activity for similar reasons as the Bermuda Triangle misrepresentations, you’d be correct.

SEE ALSO: The World's Most Dangerous Oceans

Join the conversation about this story »

Sporting a bushy beard and clutching a can of Coke, a castaway who says he survived more than a year adrift in the Pacific Ocean arrived in the Marshall Islands capital Majuro on Monday.

A male nurse had to help the man previously identified as Jose Ivan down the gangplank of a police patrol boat after a 22-hour trip from the remote coral atoll where he washed ashore last week after apparently setting sail from Mexico on December 24, 2012.

About 1,000 curious onlookers crowded the dock for a glimpse of the long-haired fisherman, who smiled and waved briefly before he was whisked away for a medical check-up at Majuro Hospital.

The castaway told US ambassador Thomas Armbruster, who was acting as an interpreter for Marshall Islands authorities, that he was originally from El Salvador but had been living in Mexico for 15 years before his epic voyage.

"He said he is a shrimp and shark fisherman," Armbruster said Monday in Majuro minutes after talking to him. "He looked better than one would expect."

And foreign ministry officials said he told them during a debriefing that he was a 37-year-old whose full name was Jose Salvador Albarengo.

He said he lived in Tapachula, near the Mexican border with Guatemala, and worked for a company named Camoronera Dela Costa.

Albarengo said he was on a shark-fishing expedition with a youth named Xiquel when strong winds blew them off course and they became lost.

Albarengo said the boy, described as 15- to 18-years old, died a few weeks into the ordeal because he could not eat raw bird meat.

The surviving fisherman was found disorientated and clad only in ragged underpants last Thursday, after his 24-foot (7.3-meter) fiberglass boat floated onto a reef at Ebon Atoll, the southernmost cluster of coral islands in the Marshalls.

Unable to speak English, he communicated to his rescuers through pictures and gestures that he had survived the 12,500 kilometer (8,000 mile) odyssey by eating turtles, birds and fish and drinking turtle blood when there was no rain.

Marshall Islands immigration chief Damien Jacklick said authorities were still gathering information and the foreign affairs department planned to contact overseas officials to arrange his repatriation.

"With the help of the US ambassador, we were able to obtain information on his family members in El Salvador and the United States," he told AFP. "We hope this information will help us track down his family."

Medics plan to give Albarengo a thorough check before he is interviewed by detectives.

He spoke briefly to a Spanish interpreter via a faltering radio link over the weekend while still at Ebon Atoll and said he was keen to return home.

"I feel bad," he said of his physical and mental state. "I am so far away. I don't know where I am or what happened."

Stories of survival in the vast Pacific are not uncommon.

In 2006 three Mexicans made international headlines when they were discovered drifting, also in a small fibreglass boat near the Marshall Islands, nine months after setting out on a shark-fishing expedition.

They survived on a diet of rainwater, raw fish and seabirds, with their hopes kept alive by reading the Bible.

Castaways from Kiribati, to the south, frequently find land in the Marshall Islands after ordeals of weeks or months at sea in small boats.

Join the conversation about this story »

The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia, on trial for manslaughter and abandoning ship, returned to the scene of his alleged crime today.

In July 2012, the cruise ship that ran aground and capsized off the coast off the coast of Italy, killing 32 people. Captain Francesco Schettino denies the charges, which could put him in prison for 20 years.

Schettino attended a health and safety briefing, then toured the wreck. He was on the scene "as a defendant, not a consultant," the BBC quoted Judge Giovanni Puliatta as saying.

Here he is on the ship, at center:

He took the tour with his lawyer:

In September, salvage workers successfully flipped the capsized ship upright. This summer, it will be floated to the surface and towed away to be torn up for scrap.

SEE ALSO: Jaguar's Making An Awesome Station Wagon It Won't Sell To Americans

Join the conversation about this story »

In 1857, during the dwindling years of the California Gold Rush, a steamship loaded with some 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms) of gold was ensnared in a hurricane and sunk off the coast of South Carolina, banishing gold bars and freshly minted coins to the bottom of the sea. Last month, during a reconnaissance expedition to the wreckage of the so-called "Ship of Gold," more than 60 lbs. (27 kg) of the lost treasure was recovered.

Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., a company that specializes in deep-ocean exploration, retrieved five gold bars and two gold coins — one from 1850 that was minted in Philadelphia, and the other from 1857 that was minted in San Francisco — from the sunken ship known as the SS Central America.

The precious artifacts were recovered during a reconnaissance dive to the shipwreck site on April 15. Odyssey Marine Exploration researchers are in the process of documenting the underwater site, and they eventually plan to conduct a full archaeological excavation of the shipwreck, according to company officials. [See photos of the expedition to the Gold Rush shipwreck]

The remains of the SS Central America were first located in 1988 by the Columbus-America Discovery Group. The ship was found at a depth of 7,200 feet (2,200 meters), about 160 miles (257 kilometers) off the coast of South Carolina.

From 1988 to 1991, recovery operations managed to retrieve gold from approximately 5 percent of the total shipwreck site, historians have said. Odyssey Marine Exploration now has an exclusive contract to excavate and recover the rest of the SS Central America's treasure.

Experts say the shipwreck could still contain a commercial shipment of gold that was valued in 1857 at $93,000, company officials said. A "substantial amount of passenger gold," valued in 1857 at between $250,000 and $1.28 million, could also be locked within the ship's sunken remains, according to Odyssey Marine Exploration.

Still, the treasure's true worth remains to be seen. "The ultimate value of the recovery can only be determined once the total quantity, quality and form of the recovered gold is known," company officials said in a statement.

Last month, the Odyssey Marine Exploration's remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV), named Zeus, became the first to visit the famous shipwreck in decades.

"This dive confirms for me that the site has not been disturbed since 1991, when I was last there," Bob Evans, chief scientist and historian for the Recovery Limited Partnership, which legally owns the shipwreck, said in a statement.

Besides the gold bars and coins, the two-hour expedition also uncovered a bottle, a piece of pottery, a sample of the shipwreck's wooden structure and part of a scientific experiment that had been left at the site 20 years ago, company officials said.

"The skill exhibited and results achieved during the initial reconnaissance dive reinforces our belief that the Odyssey team was the absolute best choice for this project," Craig Mullen, director of operations for the Recovery Limited Partnership, said in a statement.

The Odyssey team also plans to collect biological samples from the shipwreck site, which could offer researchers a glimpse into deep-ocean biological processes, company officials said.

The SS Central America was 280-feet-long (85 meters), and was christened the SS George Law when it first launched in 1853. The steamship operated during the California Gold Rush on the Atlantic leg of voyages between San Francisco and New York. As such, the ship made 43 round trips between Panama and New York before it sank.

Original article on Live Science.

• Disasters at Sea: 6 Deadliest Shipwrecks
• Shipwrecks Gallery: Secrets of the Deep
• Image Gallery: Stunning Shots of the Titanic Shipwreck

SEE ALSO: 10 Insane Things That Happen When A Diver Descends 400 Feet On A Single Breath

Join the conversation about this story »

A marine exploration group says it has recovered nearly 1,000 ounces of gold from a long-ago shipwreck 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina. 

Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration announced it had completed its latest mission to the site of the wrecked SS Central America, which went down in a hurricane in 1857. We first heard about the story from William J. Broad in the New York Times.  

Gold contracts were recently trading at $1,288.90 an ounce, meaning the haul could be worth about $1.3 million. Among the specific items recovered:

• Five gold ingots believed to weigh between 96.5 and 313.5 ounces
• Two $20 Double Eagle coins
• A bottle
• A piece of pottery
• A sample of the ship's hull

But this was only a recon mission, and many believe a lot more where this came from — up to $336 million by one estimate. 

The wreck was first probed 25 years ago, and ever since has been the subject of numerous claims. That actual owner remains on the lam, accused of bilking investors on the initial recovery enterprise he'd set up. The firm, Recovery Limited Partnership, is now in receivership, and its court-appointed receiver is now overseeing the entire project. 

The wreck of the Central America itself is an amazing, tragic story. It's said to have contributed to the Great Panic of 1857, since its reported $2 million (in 1857 dollars) gold supplies were destined for commercial interests in New York. Meanwhile, 425 people ended up drowning.

You've got to read Broad's full piece to get a flavor of the zaniness of the entire undertaking»

Odyssey is listed on NASDAQ as OMEX. Shares were up nearly 1.5% Friday.

SEE ALSO: We Could Be At The Start Of A Sea Change In American Migration Patterns

Join the conversation about this story »

had finished university and all my course mates were getting jobs or doing PhDs, but it just hadn’t happened for me.

Then I heard about a role working as an observer on a three-month fishing trip from Cape Town, across the South Atlantic and towards the Antarctic.

I would be there to watch what the crew was doing and see what sort of fish they were catching, as a condition of their license. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing but it suited my degree in marine and fisheries science, and I thought it would get employers’ attention when I put it on my CV. I had no idea quite how hard it would be.

The boat, called the Sudur Havid, didn’t have much heating. It was old and rusty and everything stank of either nicotine or diesel. The corridors were very narrow and claustrophobic. The crew welcomed me, though, which doesn’t always happen to observers: apart from me, there were 37 other guys from all over the place, including South Africa, Namibia, Germany, Iceland and Portugal.

Two days into the journey, we had to turn back to get the pumps fixed, which later turned out to be our undoing. They were replaced with smaller pumps which weren’t able to process the fish waste as well, but nothing bigger was available without a delay. We needed to get out for the start of the season, which is famous for bumper hauls in that part of the world.

Two months in, we refueled from a tanker at sea. We already had a lot of fish in the hold, so the boat was now very heavily laden. One of the crew pointed out to me how low the ship was; how we could see water through the grills in the floor when we never could before. I didn’t worry though. The skipper was very experienced – he wasn’t God to me but he wasn’t far off – and surely he knew what he was doing.

What did worry me was a conversation I had with another crew member, who said that if we ever abandoned ship I would have to watch out for knives. He said people would pull one on you to assure their place in a raft. The thought was terrifying because of course a fishing boat is full of them. Then, a couple of days before the accident we caught a sea bird, possibly an Albatross, which is bad luck for sailors. At the time I wasn’t particularly superstitious, though maybe I am now.

On Saturday 6th June I stuck my head out of my cabin to see the roughest conditions we’d encountered. We were 170 miles off South Georgia and the waves were just enormous – 10 metres high. There was nothing to see but grey sea and grey sky. One of the skippers recorded the temperature as -15 degrees centigrade with wind chill, and the seawater was -1, which is just above the point at which it freezes there. The boat was going up and down, left and right; if I had tried standing in the middle of the deck I would have been off my feet.

Still, the rest of the crew were laughing and joking. They seemed quite relaxed, so while I knew it was going to be an awful day I thought I should just get on with it. There was a sense of camaraderie; people get by in worse conditions.

In the afternoon I was down in the factory, where the fish were processed at water level. The waves were hitting the hatches and blasting in, which would normally not be a problem because the water would just be pumped out. But that day there was so much water coming in and the pumps blocked up with the fish waste.

Before we knew it there was not just a little bit of water washing backwards and forwards but several inches. I realized my foot was wet, which was strange; all the time I had been at sea the water had never gone over the top of my boot. People were going upstairs to tell the skipper we needed to stop fishing and sort out the pumps, but he said we would be fine.

The water kept building up and the big problem is that any water a boat takes on makes it extremely unstable. When we tried to start the emergency pump it wouldn’t work. It must have been about 3pm when we realised something was very wrong. There was a distinct moment when I was helping an engineer try to unblock one of the pumps, and the boat went over to one side and didn’t roll back. I thought – my God, this is it.

People were throwing life jackets across the factory. Those of us who were downstairs struggled out as the waves were hitting the ceiling. When I got up on deck I asked one of the crew whether we were abandoning ship. There had been no klaxon or emergency procedure. He just said, “Yeah, it looks like it”.

When I got up on deck I asked one of the crew whether we were abandoning ship. There had been no klaxon or emergency procedure. He just said, “Yeah, it looks like it”.

We started launching the four life rafts. One of them failed to inflate.

Two of the Portuguese guys jumped onto another one, then cut the rope and drifted away from the boat before anyone else could get on.

We’ll never know what made them do that; their raft was found afterwards, upturned and empty. I think it was too light with just a couple of them in it.

The adrenaline was starting to fire through my body. I was just thinking 'this can’t be real, surely it can’t be as bad as it looks'. I had a moment where I was breathing really heavily, almost hyperventilating.

I know this sounds really cheesy but a line from a film of Robinson Crusoe just sprang into my head: “All men must die; it’s not when but how that matters.” Nobody was giving any orders so I calmed down, caught my breath and started checking the crew, moving them to the back of the boat, shouting at them they were going to be fine if they just jumped into one of the two rafts we had left.

I was the last one off the Sudur Havid. I picked the wrong raft though; while the other one got away from the boat, ours banged against it repeatedly, pushing us under water. It knocked some of us senseless and left others with horrible injuries. When we came up again the raft was like a giant paddling pool filled with Slush Puppy. We tried bailing the water out but the waves just brought it back in again. I thought a lot of the guys had gone quiet at that point. Perhaps I was trying to block it out but in retrospect they were probably already dead.

We were on that raft for nearly three hours. It was getting dark and we didn’t have any lights or flares, so even while I hadn't given up I had no idea how we were going to make it through until morning. Fortunately a boat nearby called the Isla Camila had heard our Mayday and sped to the scene. She managed to find the first raft in 20 minutes once she arrived, and then somehow one of the crew caught a flash of our orange canopy in the waves.

They took the survivors to South Georgia and from there I went back to the UK. Of the 17 men on my raft, 10 had died. In total, 17 out of the 38 crew were killed.

At the time I felt angry, but now I look back on it with sadness. I went back to South Africa a year later to give evidence at an inquiry into the accident. The court found that the officers in charge of the vessel were at fault for fishing for too long and not listening to their crew when they told them to stop. They were never fined or anything though, because neither of the two men in charge that day had survived.

It’s been 16 years since the Sudur Havid sank and my job now is away from the sea – I go into schools and teach kids about wildlife. At first I didn’t want to talk about the accident because I didn’t want to upset those close to me or let it define my life, but now I feel I owe it to the guys who died to remember.

I live in Aberdeen with my wife and two children – Tate, 7, and Camila, 4, who is named after the boat that rescued us.

The Last Man Off by Matt Lewis is published by Penguin Books and priced at £16.99 in hardback

Join the conversation about this story »

A 200-year-old stoneware seltzer bottle that was recently recovered from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea contains alcohol, according to the results of a preliminary analysis.

Researchers discovered the well-preserved and sealed bottle in June, while exploring the so-called F53.31 shipwreck in Gdańsk Bay, close to the Polish coast. Preliminary laboratory tests have now shown the bottle contains a 14-percent alcohol distillate, which may be vodka or a type of gin called jenever, most likely diluted with water.

The chemical composition of the alcohol corresponds to that of the original brand of "Selters" water that is engraved on the bottle, according to the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk, Poland.

The bottle is embossed with the word "Selters," the name of a supplier of high-quality carbonated water from the Taunus Mountains area in Germany. Water from Selters was discovered about 1,000 years ago, which makes it one of the oldest types of mineral water in Europe, and one whose alleged health benefits are legendary. [See Images of the Seltzer Bottle and Baltic Shipwreck]

"The bottle dates back to the period of 1806-1830 and has been recovered during the works on the F-53-31 shipwreck, or the so-called Głazik," which in Polish means a small rock, Tomasz Bednarz, an underwater archaeologist the National Maritime Museum who leads the research on the shipwreck, said in a statement last month.

The bottle, which has a capacity of about 1 liter (34 ounces), was manufactured in Ranschbach, Germany, a town located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away from the springs of Selters water. Here's what it looks like close up:

In addition to the bottle, researchers exploring the shipwreck also recovered fragments of ceramics, a small bowl, a few pieces of dinnerware, stones and rocks, Bednarz said.

At the beginning of July, researchers submitted the bottle and its contents for testing to the J.S. Hamilton chemical laboratory in Gdynia, Poland, to see if the vessel contained original "Selters" water, or whether it had been refilled with a different liquid. The final results of the laboratory analysis are expected to be completed at the beginning of September, though their preliminary results suggest the bottle had been refilled with some kind of alcohol.

How does it taste? Apparently, the alcohol is drinkable, the archaeologists involved told the news site of Poland's Ministry of Science and Science Education. "This means it would not cause poisoning. Apparently, however, it does not smell particularly good," Bednarz said, according to the Ministry.

The springs of Selters water eventually went dry at the beginning of the 19th century, and therefore the water became much harder to obtain, according to the National Maritime Museum in Gdańsk.

In 1896, a group of Selters residents decided to look for new sources of the legendary water, and, after they made multiple boreholes, a fountain of water exploded from one of the wells in an area near a local castle.

These days, Selters is sold as a luxury product. Although glass bottles have replaced the stoneware bottles, the water quality is believed to be the same as it was when the water was originally discovered.

Follow Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on Twitter. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

• Image Gallery: Stunning Shots of the Titanic Shipwreck
• Photos: Shipwreck Under the World Trade Center
• The 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth

Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SEE ALSO: Ship Found Under World Trade Center Site Is From 1770s Philadelphia

Join the conversation about this story »