The waters just west of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge hide a graveyard of sunken ships. By some estimates, there are 300 wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area alone. But only a fraction of them have been seen by scientists.

Marine archaeologists and researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have set out to document those lost vessels. Over the course of a five-day survey that just ended yesterday (Sept. 15), the team discovered the sites of at least four wrecks: the 1910 SS Selja shipwreck, the 1863 wreck of the clipper ship Noonday and two unidentified wrecks.

"We're looking at an area that was a funnel to the busiest and most important American port on the Pacific Coast," said James Delgado, director of Maritime Heritage for the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. The wrecks in the Gulf of the Farallones span a huge chunk of history, from 1595 to the present. Perhaps the best-known recent example is the tanker Puerto Rican, which exploded and sank off San Francisco in 1984. [See Photos of the Sunken Ships Near San Francisco]

Delgado told Live Science that the team used a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to assess eight spots that had intriguing sonar signals. Four of of those sites turned out to have shipwrecks.

One of the newly located wrecks, the SS Selja steam freighter, was a workhorse that carried goods between the Pacific Northwest and China and Japan. On Nov. 22, 1910, the 380-foot-long (116 meters) vessel sank after it collided with a steamer named Beaver off Point Reyes, California. The Master of Selja, Olaf Lie, tried suing the Beaver and its owners for the loss of the ship, but the maritime court ruled against Lie, claiming he had been going too fast in a thick fog and was responsible, according to NOAA.

A volunteer who reanalyzed a cache of NOAA sonar data found a signal that was the right size and in the right location to be the clipper ship Noonday. The vessel had brought men and supplies to California during and after the Gold Rush. On New Year's Day in 1863, after a 139-day journey from Boston, the Noonday struck a rock just as it was approaching its destination, the San Francisco harbor. It quickly took on water and sank. Today, the vessel is obscured by mud.

The team also discovered one badly broken-up wreck covered in fishnets and a rather intact tugboat where no wreck was expected to be found, Delgado said. "We have a little homework to do there," he added.

NOAA additionally completed the first sonar survey of the wrecks of the tankers Frank H. Buck and Lyman Stewart, which were both loaded with oil when they ran aground in 1937 and 1922, respectively, after collisions with other vessels in thick fog. The engines from both shipwrecks are visible today when the tide goes out off San Francisco's Lands End park.

NOAA has created an online inventory of underwater footage, sonar images, historic photographs and documents related to the wrecks that have been located.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Gold Rush Shipwreck: Photos of a Real-Life Underwater Treasure Hunt
• Disasters at Sea: 6 Deadliest Shipwrecks
• In Photos: Mission to 2,000-Year-Old Antikythera Shipwreck

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A trove of gold coins, bracelets, buckles and broaches are among the precious treasures retrieved from a 157-year-old shipwreck off the coast of South Carolina.

The "Ship of Gold," known in its sailing days as the SS Central America, was loaded down with 30,000 lbs. (13,600 kilograms) of gold when a hurricane sent it to the watery depths 160 miles (260 kilometers) from the coast of South Carolina on Sept. 12, 1857. In 1988, the shipwreck site was discovered, and recovery efforts pulled large amounts of gold from the bottom. But only about 5 percent of the site was excavated.

Now, deep-sea exploration company Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., is re-excavating the site. Divers first pulled up five gold bars and two gold coins from the wreck in April 2014. Now, the recovery ship, the Odyssey Explorer, is benched for repairs, and archaeologists are quite literally counting the booty. [Gold Rush: Photos of a Real-Life Underwater Treasure Hunt]

Odyssey divers and archaeologists have now recovered more than 15,500 gold and silver coins and 45 gold bars from the wreck site, according to the company. They've also found gold jewelry, gold nuggets and snippets of 19th-century life, from glass containers to chewing tobacco still in its package. 

Down with the ship

The SS Central America was a wooden-hulled, copper-plated steamship that traveled between New York and San Francisco during the heady days of the California Gold Rush. At the time the ship sank, it was carrying numerous gold ingots and freshly minted Double Eagle coins, which were worth $20 apiece at the time. So much gold was lost that public confidence in the banks — already overstretched at the time — was shattered, causing bank failures and a financial panic (The Panic of 1857) that resulted in a three-year economic depression.

Some of the 571 passengers and crew on board the SS Central America managed to evacuate to other ships during the storm, but 425 died.

Odyssey has conducted a new high-resolution video survey of the wreck site, and is currently evaluating the data from the survey while the company's recovery ship, the Odyssey Explorer, is being repaired. The company gets 80 percent of the proceeds from the recovery of the "Ship of Gold's" treasure, pending the payment of a negotiated day rate and fee by Recovery Limited Partnership, the business financing the recovery. After these fees are set, Odyssey will receive 45 percent of the proceeds from the recovered treasure.

Sunken treasure

Among the artifacts retrieved from the shipwreck are glass stemware and perfume bottles, as well as a gold locket, a gold ring and a gilded bracelet, according to documents registering the finds with the court system.

Many of the finds harken back to the lives lost on the ship. Clay pipes, tobacco and even old photographic plates have been found resting in the debris field of the wreck. So have bits of jewelry, including earring hooks, badge pins, buckles and a set of gold-and-quartz cufflinks. In early August, divers found pieces of an old music box. Even the pits from long-rotted fruit have been recovered from the wreck.

Odyssey plans to resume excavations at the site within the next year.

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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Sanaa (AFP) - Seventy Ethiopian migrants have drowned after their boat sank near the entrance to the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen, the Yemeni Interior Ministry said.

The boat capsized off the port city of Al-Makha, near the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website Sunday. It said the boat sank in bad weather.

SEE ALSO: After Ferry Disaster, South Korea Is Getting Rid Of Its Coast Guard

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A 51,000 ton cargo ship was intentionally run aground over the weekend outside of Southampton on the southern coast of England. 

The Norwegian-owned vessel — christened the Hoegh Osaka — had just left port on its way to Germany when it developed what the owners Hoegh Autoliners called a "severe list."

The Hoegh Osaka's crew decided to beach the beach vessel in an attempt to save it and its cargo.

Fortunately, all of 25 members of crew made it safely to shore. 

At the time of the incident, the ship was transporting as many as 1,200 luxury cars and SUVs from Jaguar and Land Rover, with an estimated value of $45 million.

In addition, the Osaka was also carrying 65 vehicles from BMW's MINI division, valued at an estimated $2 million, reports the BBC. All of the cars were reportedly destined for the Middle East.

Salvage teams have already boarded the vessel in preparation to refloat the 590-ft.-long ship.

Amazingly, this isn't the first time a ship full of luxury cars has been involved in a maritime catastrophe. The most famous case in recent history involves the sinking of another Norwegian car carrier — the MV Tricolor.

In December of 2002, the vessel sank in the North Sea after a collision with the Bahamanian cargo ship Kariba.

Following the collision, the Tricolor capsized and went down within half an hour. Fortunately, all 24 crew members made it safety.

At the time of its sinking, the Tricolor was on its way to Southampton from Belgium with a shipment of 2,871 luxury cars from BMW, Saab, and Volvo.

According to Jalopnik, the automotive cargo held a total value of $100 million. This included a shipment of early production run Volvo XC90 SUVs – a highly coveted vehicle at the time.

The Tricolor came to rest in one of the busiest sea lanes in the world. The wreck was reportedly struck by no fewer than three ships after its sinking.

The vessel settled in about 100-feet of water, 20 miles off the coast of France. According to Australia's Drive, Smit International— a Dutch salvage company — was contracted to recover the 55,000 ton car carrier from the sea floor in 2003. 

Smit — the same company tasked with salvaging the stricken Kursk nuclear submarine from the bottom of the Barents Sea in 2000 — chose not to refloat the entire vessel. Instead, the firm used high-tension wires to cut the ship in 9 segments. 

Sadly, none of the Triocolor's luxury cars bound for the US could be rescued.

The Osaka's cargo is likely to be in much better condition. Which leads bargain hunters to ask the question, "Can I get a hefty discount on a salvage-titled Jag?"

SEE ALSO: The Range Rover Sport V8 Supercharged Is The Best SUV On — Or Off — The Road

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Beneath the cold waves of Lake Michigan rests an aging shipwreck, its wooden planks encrusted with brown-and-gray zebra mussels, that may be the remnants of a 17th-century ship called the Griffin, two Michigan-based treasure hunters say.

French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the Griffin in 1679, but it was lost in Lake Michigan the same year.

In 2011, Michigan-based treasure hunters Kevin Dykstra and Frederick Monroe found a shipwreck as they were searching for the $2 million in gold that, according to local legend, fell from a ferry crossing Lake Michigan in the 1800s, they told WZZM, a western Michigan news station.

Their sonar caught a mass below, and Dykstra dove into the water to take video.

"I didn't go down there with the expectation of seeing a shipwreck — I can tell you that," Dykstra told Live Science. When he and Monroe later reviewed the video, they realized it might be the Griffin.

But other experts aren't convinced that the wreck is the Griffin. Rather, it may be the remnants of a tugboat that was scrapped after "steam engines became more economical to operate," said Brendon Baillod, a Great Lakes historian who has written scholarly papers on the Griffin.

The wreck's discoverers agree that more evidence is needed.

State archaeologists reviewed the footage, and "They've been very diligent to say, 'This is really interesting; these are some neat pictures,'" Dykstra said. "Can we call this the Griffin? Certainly not — not without a lot more information — but these are very compelling."

Le Griffon

La Salle sailed the Griffon through the Great Lakes and crossed into Lake Michigan in an effort to reach the mouth of the Mississippi River, Baillod said. But the explorer ran out of money, so he disembarked with the other expedition leaders, leaving the ship and its crew to pay off his debts with furs. La Salle never saw the Griffin again.

La Salle returned to the area in 1682, to try again to locate the Mississippi's mouth. But members of the Potawatomi tribe brought pieces of the ship to the explorer, including some moldy beaver furs and a pair of sailor's britches, said Baillod, who translated La Salle's journal from French to English.

The Native Americans told La Salle the crew planned to sail toward the Straits of Mackinac in stormy weather.

"The [American] Indians told the captain not to sail out, to wait the storm out, but he wouldn't listen to them," Baillod said. The captain lost control of the ship as strong winds blew it away from shore, southward, toward islands in the distance.

"They lost the ship from sight," Baillod said, "and that's the last anybody has ever seen the Griffin."

Shipwreck Spotted

About 30 adventurers have claimed to have found the Griffin, usually by happenstance, Baillod said.

"They're looking for something else, they find an old ship and they've heard of the Griffin, so they pronounce it the Griffin," Baillod said.

Moreover, Baillod said he hasn't heard of anyone looking for the Griffin near the Beaver Island archipelago, which is likely the area mentioned in La Salle's journal, Baillod said.

But the latest finding, made popular again by Wreck Diving Magazine in its latest issue, holds a number of clues about the ship's past.

"There was no rudder on the boat," Dykstra said. "That was kind of telling to us that the ship probably weathered a storm; otherwise, there would probably be a rudder on it."

They also found a part of the ship that they said could be a mussel-covered griffin, the mythical beast carved onto the ship's bow.

On a subsequent dive, Dykstra took a magnet with him to help determine the metal composition of the ship. Unexpectedly, a nail attached itself to the magnet, and the treasure hunters only discovered it later, once they were above water.

"When we had it looked at, they [the archaeologists] could tell that the nail was very old," Dykstra said. "It was a hand-forged nail, which helps date it back to that time period, we feel."

The state of Michigan has rules stipulating that artifacts found on state land, including the land at the bottom of the Great Lakes, are state property. The two men did not bring up the nail on purpose, and they plan to return it to the state, said Dean Anderson, the state archaeologist for Michigan.

About 1,500 shipwrecks have been found on the bottom of Lake Michigan, Anderson said, and it's unclear whether this one is the Griffin.

"It's very difficult to access a wreck based on photo and film footage," Anderson said. If the state underwater archaeologist were to look at the wreck, he would look for artifacts that could be dated, such as ceramics or glass.

Unsolved Mystery

Baillod said he is "99 percent sure" that the wreck is not that of the Griffon. The figurehead likely isn't the remains of a griffin, he said, but a "big encrustation of zebra mussels," on burned wood. He noted that the wreck is near the western Michigan coast, not near Beaver Island, the area mentioned in La Salle's journal.

But Dykstra and Monroe said they'll wait until they hear the final word. They're not going back to the wreckage for a while, so they don't make the site vulnerable to other treasure seekers. In the meantime, the duo plans to continue their hunt for the gold bullion.

"It's a mystery ship that got in our way," Dykstra said, "and now, we're going for the gold."

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• In Photos: Mission to 2,000-Year-Old Antikythera Shipwreck
• Journey of North Carolina's Oldest Shipwreck
• Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle

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FLORENCE (Reuters) - An Italian prosecutor asked a court on Monday to sentence the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner to more than 26 years in jail for his role in the 2012 disaster that killed 32 people.

Francesco Schettino was the commander of the vessel, a floating hotel as long as three football pitches, when it came too close to shore and hit rocks off the Tuscan holiday island of Giglio.

In summing up arguments at the trial in the nearby of Grosseto, Prosecutor Maria Navarro said Schettino should serve 14 years for manslaughter and causing injuries, nine for causing a shipwreck, three for abandoning ship, and a further three months for giving false testimony.

The trial is expected to go to the jury next month.

The prosecutor said that if he is convicted, Schettino should be jailed immediately because there was a risk he would try to leave the country. In Italy, most defendants remain free pending appeals trials

More than 4,000 passengers and crew were on the ship when it capsized, prompting a chaotic nighttime rescue.

It wallowed partially submerged near the port of Giglio for more than two years. The wreck was towed away last year in one of the most complex maritime salvages on record.

The Tuscany region and the island of Giglio are seeking 220 million euros (165 million pounds) in damages from Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp because of the negative effects the disaster had on tourism.

Costa Cruises avoided a criminal trial in the case by agreeing to pay a 1 million euro fine to Italy last year, but has said it would pay thousands of euros in damages to survivors.

Schettino drew derision in Italy for bringing the Concordia too close to shore in an ill-fated maritime maneuver known as a "salute" and abandoning ship before all survivors were rescued.

An audio recording of an Italian coast guard officer shouting at Schettino in a cell phone conversation to: "Get back on board, damn it!" went viral on the internet and the phrase was printed on T-shirts.

(Writing by Isla Binnie; Editing by Toby Chopra)

SEE ALSO: Here's What The Inside Of The Sunken Costa Concordia Looks Like After 2 Years Underwater

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Tommy Thompson — a famous shipwreck hunter who located a Gold Rush-era wreck, and then became embroiled in a long legal drama over the spoils — has been captured in Florida after more than two years in hiding.

The U.S. Marshals Service announced on Wednesday (Jan. 28) that Thompson and Alison Antekeier, thought to be his girlfriend and assistant, were arrested without incident at the Hilton hotel in Boca Raton, Florida, where they had been living for more than a year using fake identities and paying in cash. 

"Thompson was smart — perhaps one of the smartest fugitives ever sought by the U.S. Marshals," Marshal Peter Tobin said in a statement. [Gold Rush Shipwreck: Photos of a Real-Life Underwater Treasure Hunt]

In the late 1980s, Thompson pulled off an astonishing feat: He located wreck of the SS Central America at a depth of 7,200 feet (2,200 meters) off the coast of the Carolinas. The elusive vessel had long captured the imagination of shipwreck hunters. It sank during a fierce hurricane in 1857 on its way from Panama to New York, killing more than 400 passengers and bringing 21 tons of gold to the bottom of the sea.

Thompson and his crew had pored over hundreds of historical accounts to try to pinpoint the most likely resting place for the shipwreck. In September 1988, Thompson and his crew became the first people in 130 years to lay eyes on the SS Central America through cameras attached to their underwater robot called Nemo. Thompson and his team recovered gold coins and bars reportedly worth more than $50 million. In 1992, LIFE magazine hailed it "greatest treasure ever found."

But a long legal fight started in 2005, when Thompson was sued by some of his investors who charged that they didn't receive the profits they that were promised when they backed the expensive project. By August 2012, an arrest warrant had been issued after Thompson failed to show up for a series of court dates, and to explain what happened to the gold. A similar arrest warrant was issued for Antekeier a few months later.

In a deposition filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, U.S. Marshal Mark Stroh described Thompson's disappearance — and it's the stuff of movie plots.

Thompson and Antekeier had been living in relative seclusion in a rented mansion named Gracewood in Vero Beach, Florida. A handyman named James Kennedy entered the home after Thompson's arrest warrant was issued to confront the couple about unpaid rent. But Thompson and Antekeier had vanished, and their home was in a dire state. There was mold growing throughout the house and items strewn about the rooms, including a book called "How to Be Invisible,"currency straps designed to hold $10,000, 12 active cell phones and pipes used to bury money underground, which explained why the pair always paid their rent in "sweaty" stacks of cash, according to the deposition.

The Marshals Service looked for the pair for more than two years.

Thompson and Antekeier will eventually have to face the original charges in Ohio, where Thompson's company, Columbus-America Discovery Group, and many of his investors were based. Thompson appeared in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida, this week and reportedly told a judge that he has medical conditions, such as encephalitis, an overactive immune system and allergies, which could worsen if he is sent back to Ohio.

"I haven't been out of Florida since 2005 because I'm sensitive to materials that are north," Thompson said, according toThe Columbus Dispatch. "I just want you to know, it could be very fatal for me to go up there."

Thompson and Antekeier are due in court in Florida for another hearing on Wednesday (Feb. 4), when a judge will determine the next steps for their case.

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Disasters at Sea: 6 Deadliest Shipwrecks
• In Photos: Arctic Shipwreck Solves 170-Year-Old Mystery
• Photos: Underwater Google Street View Reveals Stunning Corals

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NOW WATCH: Scientists Discovered What Actually Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization

More than 70 years after it sank during World War II, the legendary Japanese battleship Musashi has been discovered off the coast of the Philippines.

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been leading an expedition to find the Musashi — one of the biggest battleships ever built — aboard his high-tech 414-foot-long (125 meters) yacht, the M/Y Octopus. The team announced this week that they finally located the shipwreck in the Sibuyan Sea.

"Mr. Allen has been searching for the Musashi for more than 8 years, and its discovery will not only help fill in the narrative of WWII's Pacific theater, but bring closure to the families of those lost," a statement on Allen's website said. [See photos of the battleship Musashi's sunken remains]

The Musashi and her sister ship, the Yamato, were considered the heaviest and most powerful battleships ever built, though neither survived World War II.

The Yamato sank during a fierce battle for Okinawa on April, 7 1945. In the 1980s, shipwreck hunters found the Yamato 180 miles (290 kilometers) southwest of Kyushu, one of the main islands of Japan. The ship was split in two and was found resting at a depth of 1,120 feet (340 m).

American forces sank the 862-foot-long (263 m), 73,000-ton (66,225 metric tons) Musashi on Oct. 24, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, killing more than 1,000 members of the ship's 2,399-person crew. The final resting place of the ship remained elusive for decades, despite eyewitness accounts of the sinking.

Allen's team hasn't revealed too much information about exactly where and how they found the Musashi, but according to a news release, they drew from historical records from four different countries, topographical data and advanced technology aboard the M/Y Octopus. A tweet from Allen indicated that the wreck was discovered about 3,280 feet (1 km) below the water's surface.

The team released crisp underwater footage taken by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that shows several parts of the ship, including a catapult system that was used to launch float planes, a wheel on a valve from an engineering area that had Japanese script, the turret from an 18-inch (46 centimeters) naval gun, a 15-ton anchor and the battleship's bow.

Allen has a history of bankrolling ambitious tech and exploration projects. He was an early backer of Scale Composites' suborbital spacecraft SpaceShipOne. He later founded his own spaceflight company, Stratolaunch Systems, with Scale Composites founder Burt Rutan. The company is trying to build the world's largest air-launched space rocket. In 2012, Allen lent his yacht to support filmmaker James Cameron's expedition to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the ocean's deepest point.

Allen and his team said they plan to work with the Japanese government to ensure the wreck of the Musashi is treated "respectfully and in accordance with Japanese traditions."

Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter.Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

• Disasters at Sea: 6 Deadliest Shipwrecks
• In Photos: Sunken Ships Lurk Near San Francisco
• In Photos: Arctic Shipwreck Solves 170-Year-Old Mystery

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NOW WATCH: Scientists Discovered What Actually Wiped Out The Mayan Civilization

(Reuters) - A former fugitive treasure hunter and his girlfriend who were captured in January in Florida after evading authorities for years pleaded guilty on Wednesday to criminal contempt in U.S. District Court in Ohio, prosecutors said.

Thomas "Tommy" Thompson, 62, and Alison Antekeier, 47, also agreed to forfeit $425,380 in cash seized from them when they were caught, prosecutors said.

Thompson, accused by members of his team of failing to pay them after recovering a fortune in gold from a 19th century shipwreck, skipped an August 2012 U.S. District Court hearing to account for the location of gold coins and some funds.

An arrest warrant was issued for Antekeier, his then assistant and now girlfriend, when she failed to appear as a witness in the civil case in November 2012, prosecutors said.

Authorities did not track them down until late January when they were found at a Hilton Hotel in Florida where they had been living under assumed names and paying for their living expenses with cash. They were later extradited to Ohio.

"Thompson and Antekeier were very sophisticated in avoiding capture and had access to nearly unlimited funds, enabling them to stay completely off the radar for years," U.S. Marshal Peter Tobin said in a statement.

More than 400 people drowned when the SS Central America, carrying as much as 21 tons of gold from California mines, sank in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina.

Thompson's company, Columbus Exploration, confirmed in 1988 that it had found the ship and subsequently brought up gold coins and bars worth millions.

Under the plea agreements, Thompson could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, one year of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, and Antekeier to a year in prison, a year of supervised release and a $100,000 fine.

Thompson and Antekeier also agreed to help authorities identify anyone who assisted them while they were fugitives and to help identify assets in the civil case.

Sentencing dates have not been set.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

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NOW WATCH: The oil boom in North Dakota now has a serious sex-trafficking problem

The SS City Cargo, a mixed passenger and cargo ship, was carrying around 100 tons of silver coins belonging to the UK Treasury when it was torpedoed by a German submarine in November 1942.

This month, a British-led salvage team announced that it had recovered several tons of the silver coins at a world record depth of 5,150 meters (16,896 feet).

The silver coins are worth an estimated £34 million ($50 million), according to The Telegraph.

The recovery effort was led by Deep Ocean Search, which started looking for the shipwreck in November 2011. SS City Cargo was travelling from Bombay to England when it was sunk by a U-68, leading to the death of 104 people in the weeks after.

The weather and the ship's presumed depth made the search challenging. The ship was finally located, buried under meters of mud and broken in two, according to DOS.

"Many items were seen on and around the wreck including the end section of the second torpedo, where the contra-rotating propellers could clearly be seen," DOS explained in a news release. "Apart from the silver cargo this was the only item recovered from the site."

The coins were recovered in 2013 under contract to the UK Ministry of Transport.

You can see a selection of images from the shipwreck below. Head over to the DOS website for more information and to check out the full gallery.

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NOW WATCH: What the Chinese saying 'The ugly wife is a treasure at home' actually means

The SS City Cargo, a mixed passenger and cargo ship, was carrying around 100 tons of silver coins belonging to the UK Treasury when it was torpedoed by a German submarine in November 1942.

This month, a British-led salvage team announced that it had recovered several tons of the silver coins at a world record depth of 5,150 meters (16,896 feet).

The silver coins are worth an estimated £34 million ($50 million), according to The Telegraph.

The recovery effort was led by Deep Ocean Search, which started looking for the shipwreck in November 2011. SS City Cargo was travelling from Bombay to England when it was sunk by a U-68, leading to the death of 104 people in the weeks after.

The weather and the ship's presumed depth made the search challenging. The ship was finally located, buried under meters of mud and broken in two, according to DOS.

"Many items were seen on and around the wreck including the end section of the second torpedo, where the contra-rotating propellers could clearly be seen," DOS explained in a news release. "Apart from the silver cargo this was the only item recovered from the site."

The coins were recovered in 2013 under contract to the UK Ministry of Transport.

You can see a selection of images from the shipwreck below. Head over to the DOS website for more information and to check out the full gallery.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: What the Chinese saying 'The ugly wife is a treasure at home' actually means

Catania (Italy) (AFP) - Italian police have arrested two suspected people traffickers among the survivors of the migrant boat that capsized off Libya on Sunday, as the UN said 800 people were killed in the Mediterranean’s worst migrant disaster.

They said they had detained a Tunisian man believed to be the captain of the vessel and a Syrian allegedly a member of the ship's crew, taken from a group of 27 haggard survivors who arrived in the Sicilian port of Catania on Monday evening. Both face charges of people trafficking.

Under-fire EU ministers meanwhile agreed on a 10-point plan to double the resources available to the current EU border surveillance mission Triton, as the UN's refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration recounted what those onboard had witnessed.

"We can say that 800 are dead," said Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy on Tuesday, citing the survivors' accounts of the deadly crossing.

Those who escaped with their lives described to officials the moment the 20-metre (70-foot) trawler carrying them capsized after a Portuguese merchant ship approached the vessel, causing a stampede.

"There were a little over 800 people on board, including children aged between 10 and 12. There were Syrians, about 150 Eritreans, Somalians... They had left Tripoli at about 8 am on Saturday," Sami said.

The survivors hailed from Mali, Gambia, Senegal, Somalia, Eritrea and Bangladesh, she added, and all had been taken to nearby holding centres.

One other survivor was taken to hospital in Catania, on Sicily's east coast.

'No more excuses'

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini had unveiled plans earlier Monday to tackle the growing migrant crisis after telling member states they had "no more excuses" not to act.

Even as EU foreign and interior ministers met in Luxembourg to discuss ways to stem the flood of people trying to reach Europe, the International Organization for Migration said it had received a distress call from another boat -- but cautioned against concluding this was another disaster in the making.

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said separately that Italy's coast guard had asked merchant shipping to come to the aid of two boats off the Libyan coast with up to 450 migrants on board after they sought help.

Police in Greece meanwhile reported three people killed, including a child, after a boat coming from Turkey sank off the island of Rhodes.

Dramatic footage showed people trying to reach survivors huddled on a piece of wreckage as they were being swept towards rocks.

Ninety-three people were rescued alive, police said.

Europe's southern shores have been swamped over the past two weeks with migrants fleeing war and hardship, mostly via conflict-wracked Libya.

More than 11,000 migrants have been rescued by Italian authorities since the middle of last week alone and current trends suggest last year's total of 170,000 landing in Italy is likely to be exceeded in 2015.

Unveiling the 10-point action plan, Mogherini said the EU had to live up to its humanitarian values and commitments towards migrants, she said, adding: "To send them back is another way of killing them."

First on the list, ministers agreed the current EU border surveillance mission Triton should be increased to extend its range and capabilities on the bloc's southern flank.

Triton replaced Italy's own Mare Nostrum mission, which Rome scrapped late last year in protest that its EU partners would not share the burden.

The EU will also try to capture or destroy people-smuggling boats and increase cooperation across the board, the European Commission said.

The bloc will also offer a "voluntary pilot project on resettlement, providing a number of places to persons in need of protection", a key but small step forward in spreading the problem.

Up to now, countries relatively untouched by the problem had objected to this form of burden sharing, however small.

Diplomats said there could be 5,000 places available but the commission gave no figure.

Focus on people smugglers

Elsewhere EU president Donald Tusk announced an emergency leaders summit for Thursday to discuss the plan, saying: "We cannot continue like this, we can't accept that hundreds of people die."

Italy's Renzi, whose country bears the brunt of the problem, said Rome was studying the possibility of mounting "targeted interventions" against Libya-based people smugglers.

"Attacks on death rackets, attacks against slave traders (traffickers) are in our thinking," Renzi told a press conference with his Maltese counterpart Joseph Muscat.

Italian and Maltese navy boats meanwhile continued to search for the victims of Sunday's disaster, which brings to an estimated 1,600 the number of migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean this year.

Only 28 survivors have been found so far, along with 24 bodies, which were taken to Malta.

The deadliest incident prior to Sunday occurred off Malta in September 2014, when an estimated 500 migrants drowned after traffickers deliberately rammed their boat in an attempt to force the passengers onto a smaller vessel.

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A huge wave of migration across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe has created a delicate problem for leaders.

Some European politicians who discourage illegal immigration don't want to make it too easy for migrants to cross the sea into Europe, but pulling back rescue missions likely means more people dying because demand for smuggling is so high.

"The European Union has scaled back its Mediterranean rescue operation, in the hope that a reduction in the number of coastguards will discourage migrants from attempting a voyage that claimed more than 3,000 lives in the past year," Patrick Kingsley reported for The Guardian in January.

"But such a strategy underestimates the demand for smugglers such as Abu Hamada. Last year, he trafficked an estimated 10,000 people, and this year’s figure could be even higher." 

Reuters notes that critics describe Europe's strategy as "letting people drown to deter others in desperate need." More than 1,000 people are feared to have died in migrant shipwrecks over the weekend.

European Union officials have now gathered for an emergency meeting to discuss what can be done. Reuters reports that European countries have been "squabbling" about who will take how many refuges.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is asking for more EU resources to save these migrants, despite some arguing that rescue missions create a "ferry service" for illegal immigrants, according to Reuters.

The migrant crisis is now getting more attention, but this problem is nothing new.

Here's how the smuggling works:

Smugglers accept money from people who wish to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.

One smuggler in Egypt told The Guardian that he charges nearly $2,000 per person for passage to Europe, a staggering amount considering the conditions on the ships and the danger involved in the crossing.

A Syrian refugee who spoke to The Guardian said it's fairly easy to find brokers who will connect them with a smuggling operation. Migrants often stay in apartments while they wait for an available ship — they'll then go to a shoreline and take dinghies to the larger ship that will carry them to Italy.

Libya is a popular jumping-off point for the ships, and refugees from the Middle East and Africa will often travel along land routes to get to the ports the ships sail from:

Many of those who are willing to pay for the smuggling are desperate to flee dangerous situations in their own countries.

The migrants are trying to escape "conflict, repression, and poverty" from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, namely Eritrea, Niger, Syria, Iraq and Somalia, according to the Associated Press.

Reuters reports that in the EU, per capita national income is 30 times that in many African states. The EU simply offers better economic opportunities and more political stability.

And the political instability in Libya has made it easier for illegal smugglers to operate, the BBC notes.

Italy is now considering targeting these smugglers in an effort to stop the ship tragedies, according to the Associated Press. But the environment in Libya is becoming increasingly chaotic — the AP notes that fighting in the north African country is the worst it's been since dictator Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown in an uprising and subsequent civil war in 2011.

Syria and Iraq are also in crisis. Migrants from these countries are fleeing major humanitarian crises that came with the rise of Islamic state (also known as ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), making crossing the Mediterranean in an illegal smuggling operation appear no more dangerous than staying in their home countries.

Hundreds of people on the fishing boat that capsized last week were thought to have been locked in the hold of the ship, which allows the smugglers to keep control of the population more easily, according to The Telegraph. This also means that people are more likely to drown if a ship capsizes because they have no way out.

More than 3,000 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean in the last year, and tens of thousands have reportedly made it across, according to The Guardian.

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Two recent shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea believed to have taken the lives of as many as 1,300 asylum seekers and migrants has highlighted the escalating flow of people fleeing persecution, war and economic difficulties in their homelands.

Over the years, thousands of people in Asia have also used boats to escape. Here's a look at where many go — and have gone in the past — and how they are treated once they arrive.

AUSTRALIA

Countries of origin: Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, China, Somalia, Sudan, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Destinations: Most of the boats leave Indonesian ports for Christmas Island, an Australian territory 345 kilometers (215 miles) south of the Indonesian island of Java, or Ashmore Reef, a collection of Australian islands east of Christmas Island. They often arrive without passports, which makes repatriating them more difficult.

Government response: Since July 2013, Australia has refused to allow refugees who arrive by boat to settle on the mainland, and it has been turning back boats carrying asylum seekers since the current government was elected in September 2013.

It has a detention camp for asylum seekers on Christmas Island and pays Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island nation of Nauru to run similar camps where asylum seekers wait while their applications for refugee status are processed and are matched to a country that will resettle them.

Australia has an agreement to pay Cambodia to take refugees detained on Nauru, and with Papua New Guinea to resettle those camped out in that country. So far none have gone to Cambodia, while some asylum seekers have been resettled in Papua New Guinea.

Australia is much more welcoming of asylum seekers who arrive by plane, although it still requires an initial mandatory period of detention. Once out of detention, some are allowed to work while others rely on welfare, including free medical care, but they are not eligible for government housing and must find accommodation in the private rental market.

INDONESIA

Countries of origin: Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Middle Eastern countries.

Destination: Australia

Government response: Indonesia, with its thousands of islands and long stretches of unpatrolled coastlines, is a key transit country for asylum seekers and migrants wanting to get to Australia.

The country hasn't signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and doesn't legally recognize asylum seekers or refugees. But it does operate 13 detention centers around the country that temporarily house them while the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office processes their applications for refugee status and eventual resettlement in a third country such as the U.S. or Canada. Thousands more live on their own outside the detention centers.

MALAYSIA

Countries of origin: Mostly Myanmar, but also from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen and Sudan.

Destinations: Most register with the UNHCR for resettlement in a third country while others travel through Malaysia to Indonesia in a bid to reach Australia.

Government response: As in Indonesia and Thailand, asylum seekers and refugees have no legal status in Malaysia, putting them at risk of arrest and detention.

There are no refugee camps in Malaysia, and more than 100,000 of these "urban refugees" live in overcrowded, low-cost apartments or houses across the country. Their children do not have access to formal education. Barred legally from working, many earn money doing dirty or dangerous jobs that locals shun, while they wait for possible resettlement through the UNHCR — typically a process that lasts several years.

INDIA

Country of origin: Sri Lanka

Destination: India

Government response: After Sri Lanka's civil war erupted in 1983, hundreds of thousands from the ethnic Tamil minority fled the fighting between the majority Sinhalese government and Tamil rebels demanding an independent homeland. The refugees arrived in waves — many aboard crowded, rickety wooden boats that crossed the narrow bay between Sri Lanka their island nation and India — and landed on the beaches of Tamil Nadu state.

The Indian government erected hundreds of refugee camps, where authorities questioned people to make sure they were not linked to the rebels. Once cleared, they were given living quarters, monthly rations and the chance to find work in the community.

With ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties to India's Tamils in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, many refugees from Sri Lanka assimilated and took Indian citizenship. Others opted for repatriation offered at various times. The arrivals ceased when the Sri Lankan government crushed the rebels with months of heavy bombings and ended the war in 2009.

BANGLADESH

Country of origin: Myanmar

Destination: Bangladesh

Government response: Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya, a long-persecuted Muslim minority group in Myanmar, have fled to Bangladesh in recent years to escape persecution in the predominantly Buddhist nation. Roughly 400,000 Rohingya are believed to have gone to Bangladesh, where many of their ancestors came from, but only about 30,000 are officially recognized as refugees. The luckiest live in designated refugee camps, which include schools and clinics, but most either live in squalid informal camps or in poor, crowded neighborhoods.

In 2012, when waves of Rohingya sought shelter in Bangladesh, border authorities reportedly forced more than 1,300 back into the sea in their creaky vessels. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina denied the refugees had been driven away, but made clear she didn't want them, saying the country, already densely populated, "cannot bear this burden."

VIETNAMESE REFUGEES

Destination: United States, Canada, Australia

Flight and response: The mass exodus of Vietnamese "boat people" began in 1978, a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing to escape persecution by the victorious Communist government. Another wave followed in the late 1980s. The United Nations refugee agency says at least 840,000 left by sea.

The majority initially landed in Hong Kong and several Southeast Asian nations that established refugee camps and threatened to push them back, but most eventually settled in the United States, Canada and Australia.

EUROPE

Countries of origin: Mainly Syria, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia, but also many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Destination: Closest point of landfall, which usually means Italy, Greece or Malta. Many travel overland to Bulgaria and Hungary, favoring destinations like Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and other Nordic countries.

European Union's response: Asylum seekers and migrants arriving in Europe without visas are interviewed and finger-printed by authorities. EU nations have "reception centers" to house migrants where they are fed and given health care while their applications for asylum are being assessed.

Some migrants are given temporary permits allowing them to stay while their cases are studied. The country where they land is responsible for handling this, including providing free legal assistance. The process should not exceed 11 months. Those who do not qualify for residency of some kind are in some cases invited to leave Europe voluntarily, with some incentives. Others are expelled, sometimes put on a plane and flown to their home nation.

_______

Associated Press writers Raf Casert in Brussels, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, Todd Pitman in Bangkok and Katy Daigle and Tim Sullivan in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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Cellphone footage from a migrant ship that crossed the Mediterranean with hundreds of refugees on board shows how crammed the conditions are on these dangerous journeys.

Thousands of migrants died last year trying to cross the Mediterranean and get to Europe. Many of those who are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for passage on these ships are desperate to flee dangerous situations in their own countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

One such ship carrying as many as 900 people capsized off the coast of Libya last week. Nearly all on board were thought to have drowned. Hundreds of people on the boat were likely locked in the hold of the ship, which allows the smugglers to keep control of the population more easily.

A migrant who traveled on a ship similar to that one sent photos to a reporter for Al Aan TV, an Arabic-language TV network. The migrant was reportedly traveling from Turkey to Italy.

The ship is packed with people:

These stills from the reporter appear to show people in the hold of the ship:

I recently met Syrian who took boat from Turkey to #Italy. He made pics with cell phone. This is how it looks like pic.twitter.com/WkjNMoq5NZ

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) April 20, 2015

In some shots of the video, a baby can be heard crying.

Italy is now considering targeting smugglers to try to stop the ship tragedies, but an increasingly chaotic environment in Libya is creating lawlessness that allows these traffickers to operate. Smugglers can make tens of thousands of dollars per week on these migrant voyages, The Wall Street Journal notes.

Migrants from several Middle Eastern and north African countries are fleeing major humanitarian crises, making crossing the Mediterranean in an illegal smuggling operation appear no more dangerous than staying in their home countries.

Here's the full video from the Al Aan TV report:

SEE ALSO: There's a fatal flaw in how Europe is handling the Mediterranean migrant crisis

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The USS Independence aircraft carrier, which operated during World War II, has been located about a half mile underwater off California's Farallon Islands.

Using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) dubbed the Echo Ranger and a 3D-imaging sonar system, researchers have created a detailed picture of the 622-foot-long (190 m) ship, revealing that it is "amazingly intact," said scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The 3D images also showed what appears to be a plane in the carrier's hangar, the researchers noted.

"After 64 years on the seafloor, Independence sits on the bottom as if ready to launch its planes," James Delgado, chief scientist on the Independence mission, said in a statement.

"This ship fought a long, hard war in the Pacific and, after the war, was subjected to two atomic blasts that ripped through the ship. It is a reminder of the industrial might and skill of the 'greatest generation' that sent not only this ship, but their loved ones to war," added Delgado, maritime heritage director for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

After operating in the Pacific Ocean from November 1943 to August 1945, the carrier became one of 90 vessels in a target fleet for atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean in 1946.

Called Operation Crossroads, the project consisted of two atomic bomb tests: an airstrike and an underwater strike meant to reveal the effects of a nuclear explosion on a naval fleet, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (The tests continued until 1958 and included the explosion of the first hydrogen bomb in 1952, according to UNESCO.)

The USS Independence, like dozens of ships involved in Operation Crossroads, was damaged by the shock waves, heat and radiation from the tests and ultimately was sent back to U.S. waters. While the Independence was moored at San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, the U.S. Navy ran decontamination studies on it. Then, on Jan. 26, 1951, the U.S. Navy towed the carrier out to sea and sank it, according to the NOAA statement.

The U.S. Navy, after sinking the ship, documented its location, but those numbers weren't exact and the different entries varied from one another, with one suggesting the USS Independence was 300 miles (480 kilometers) off the coast, Delgado said. In actuality it is 30 miles (48 km) off the coast.

NOAA's most recent multibeam echo-sounding survey, which was from the water's surface, revealed "something big" down there; but from so far away the pictures were "pixelated," Delgado said. "It really looked like a big fuzzy caterpillar stretched out on the bottom," Delgado told Live Science.

To figure out if the "caterpillar" was the USS Independence, last month, NOAA scientists, in collaboration with Boeing, completed sonar imaging closer to the wreck.

The endeavor was part of a two-year mission to find, map and study the 300 or so historic shipwrecks in and around the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. The team used the Echo Ranger, Boeing's 18.5-foot-long (5.6 m) underwater bot, outfitted with an integrated 3D-imaging sonar system provided by tech company Coda Octopus.

Aboard the R/V Fulmar research vessel, scientists followed the autonomous underwater vehicle as it glided 150 feet (45 m) above the Independence wreck, located beneath 2,600 feet (790 meters) of water.

"We imaged the same spot on that shipwreck multiple times; that gives us very, very high definition," Blair Cunningham, technology president at Coda Octopus, said in a NOAA video.

Results showed that the carrier is upright, slightly tilted toward the starboard, or right side, and that much of the hull and flight deck are intact. But there was damage to the ship from the testing.

"The sonar images showed the damage the Navy had initially documented is still very much there, the flight deck has been distorted. Some of the areas of the flight deck have started to collapse and there are holes in the deck," Delgado said.

Also, some of the radiation — in the form of fission fragments from the decay of plutonium-239, a radioactive isotope of plutonium— from those blasts can still be found in the ship, the researchers noted. "The ship was partially decontaminated, but some of the fission fragments are expected to be still bound to the ship," said Kai Vetter, a nuclear physicist at UC Berkeley, who is involved in the project.

"Even if some of the radioactive materials 'leaked' or still 'leak' from the ship, this radioactivity will be diluted very quickly in the water reducing the concentration substantially," Vetter told Live Science. "In addition, the radiation emitted by the radioactive materials on the ship will not travel very far as the water is an excellent shield."

As the ship's metal corrodes, the associated chemical reactions can cause some of the radioactive material to leak into the water, added Vetter, who is also at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The researchers are interested in studying the long-term effects of the changing radioactivity on the ship. "We are considering to get closer to the ship next time and to potentially remove some parts of the ship for further analysis in our labs," Vetter said. That closer look would require more safety precautions to ensure no radioactive contamination of the people or equipment, he added.

Follow Jeanna Bryner on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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BRUSSELS/ROME (Reuters) - European Union leaders will effectively reverse a cutback in rescue operations the Mediterranean on Thursday to try to prevent record numbers of people drowning as they try to flee war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

But an emergency EU summit in Brussels, called after up to 900 went down on a single boat on Sunday, will do little else beyond laying out options, including attacks on smugglers and holding camps for migrants, on which the 28 states are divided.

"With the best will in the world, these issues are not solvable," a senior diplomat said, noting the gulf in living standards north and south of the Mediterranean. "We can only limit the damage."

There were just 28 survivors from Sunday's disaster, which appeared to be the worst ever among migrants fleeing by sea to Europe from north Africa.

A poignant interfaith funeral was held in Malta for 24 victims, the only ones whose bodies have been recovered so far from a ship in which many are believed to have been locked in below deck.

Imam Mohammed El Sadi said what had happened should raise awareness of the migrants' plight while Bishop Mario Grech called for action motivated by love, rather than just the law.

"We can continue to read out the laws like lawyers do, but that is not enough," he said.

A draft EU statement seen by Reuters and expected to be issued around 8 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT) after four hours of talks lists 13 proposals to deal with the pressure of hundreds of thousands of people trying to reach a continent where anti-immigrant political parties are on the rise.

But only the first point, "strengthening our presence at sea", which involves "at least doubling" financing and boosting the naval presence, is likely to translate into action soon. 

EARLIER MISSION CLOSED

Italy shut down a mission that saved the lives of more than 100,000 migrants last year because other EU countries refused to pay for it. It was replaced with a smaller EU scheme whose main focus is to patrol the bloc's borders, after countries argued that saving migrants encouraged more to come.

EU officials say that once leaders go round the table making pledges of help, the total increase announced may be greater. But practical, legal and political headaches posed by military action in Libya, setting up "reception centers" abroad or even redistributing refugees around EU states are far from solved.

"This is a political demonstration," the diplomat said, comparing it to EU efforts to present a program to counter terrorism after January's Islamist attack on Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo. "There's a phenomenon that is not at all new, but there's a dramatic event and we need to look at our strategy.

One of about 50 people protesting against the EU's refugee policies threw a plastic bag filled with jam at the director of operations at the EU border agency Frontex, Klaus Roesler, on Wednesday evening, hitting him in the head, police said.

The attack in Berlin left Roesler’s head and suit covered with dark red jam but did not hurt him and no one was detained. 

"WOEFULLY INADEQUATE"

"Operation Triton", in which Frontex has been overseeing about seven ships off the Italian coast with a monthly budget of 2.9 million euros, should get more ships and money, like a similar operation, Poseidon, off Greece.

The Italian operation, Mare Nostrum, ended six months ago after critics, notably Britain and Germany, said it was drawing more would-be migrants by raising the chances of being rescued.

There is still disagreement about this "pull factor" -- an issue also cited against Italian suggestions of setting up camps to process asylum claims in North Africa -- but for the time being EU leaders see public embarrassment at the mass drownings off their shores outweighing popular hostility to immigration.

Italy now estimates as many as 200,000 people will cross to its shores this year, up from about 170,000 reported by the International Organization for Migration for last year.

Amnesty International called the summit proposals "woefully inadequate and shameful", saying they would not end a spiral that has seen nearly 2,000 people lost at sea this year and an estimated 36,000 cross the Mediterranean successfully.

EU officials and diplomats said differences among the states meant the legal mandate of Operation Triton would not be changed to make it explicitly intended to search for migrants and rescue them close to the Libyan coast. However, commanders would have freedom to monitor where they wished to bar illegal entry to EU waters - and must under maritime law rescue anyone in trouble.

Other proposals include "surgical strikes" on boats about to be used by people smugglers and other intelligence-led actions to "destroy the business model" of human traffickers in the way that international powers clamped down on Somali pirates.

However, diplomats said some states insisted that would need a U.N. Security Council mandate that the EU was unlikely to get in the middle of its confrontation with veto-holding Russia.

Adding to the complexity, the group which controls the part of Libya around Tripoli said it would "confront" any such EU military action against its coastline.

Efforts to dissuade people trying to reach Libya, where the collapse of authority after the EU-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has made it a magnet for migrants, would focus on helping Libya's neighbors control their borders with it.

The draft also called for a new "rapid return" program for failed asylum seekers, far from straightforward, and for EU staff to process asylum requests abroad. But there is widespread scepticism about the idea of setting up big camps that could attract large numbers of people.

Addressing the uneven distribution of refugees and asylum seekers around the bloc, with wealthy Germany and Sweden drawing very large numbers, is also difficult, because once inside the EU's visa-free zone, people are free to travel where they like.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Lewis, Paul Taylor, Adrian Croft, Jan Strupczweski and Franceso Guarascio in Brussels and Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin; writing by Alastair Macdonald; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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As EU ministers meet today in reaction to the disaster in the Mediterranean earlier this week, their focus will be on immediate responses.

For example, it is likely that they will agree to strengthen patrols in the Mediterranean and support the capacity of countries in North Africa to control irregular migration flows. This is only appropriate. Over 30,000 asylum seekers are estimated to have arrived in Europe this year already, and over 1,000 have already lost their lives.

But for these and other short-term measures to have lasting impact, they need to be part of a wider approach that also pays attention to the underlying drivers for growing irregular migration towards Europe.

First, greater efforts are required to provide people at risk with protection and assistance in their own countries – so that they don’t have to flee in the first place. Over the past 25 years, significant progress has been made to develop a legal framework for protecting internally displaced persons; this now needs to be implemented more widely by developing national laws and policies. Tentative steps have also been taken to overcome the limits that sovereignty has traditionally placed on international intervention to prevent atrocities; it is now time to apply the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect more systematically and consistently.

Inevitably some people will continue to flee their country. When they do, however, they should not need to pay smugglers or embark on dangerous trips to reach safety. Second, therefore, better protection in the region is required – so that people can remain close to their homes in safety and dignity. The EU already has regional protection frameworks in place – it is time to make them work.

Third, a far more thoughtful response is required to combatting migrant smuggling. The understandable immediate reaction is to get tough, with harsher penalties and better enforcement. Of course these are required, but they underestimate how migrant smuggling actually works. It is usually based on a network of operators – arresting the captain of a boat is unlikely to have upstream effects on the rest of the network. It is a business – smugglers are adept at adjusting their offer to market conditions. And it is responsive – closing off one route simply diverts smuggling to another route. Among a range of responses required to properly undermine smuggling is better communication with potential migrants of the risks entailed.

Fourth, more refugees need to be offered the opportunity to resettle permanently in Europe. Of the almost 17 million refugees in the world today, around 100,000 each year are offered the opportunity to join programmes that take them from refugee camps to richer countries to settle there. And almost all of these places are offered by the US, Canada and Australia. Resettling more refugees in this way will never be at a scale sufficient to satisfy demand, but it’s certainly a way to demonstrate solidarity with the poorer parts of the world that continue to shoulder the burden of the refugee crisis.

Finally, of course not all those seeking to come to Europe are fleeing for their lives; a good proportion is seeking work and opportunity. Increasing options for labour migration to Europe is one way to begin to address this demand, and would also help disentangle flows of labour migrants from those of refugees.

None of these proposals is straightforward; and none will have an immediate effect. But neither are they beyond the means of the EU – there are already pilot programmes and frameworks in place for all of these. Beyond the headline-grabbing quick responses, the most important step that today’s meeting can take is to make a genuine commitment to a long-term solution for Europe’s refugee crisis.

SEE ALSO: The 16 most socially advanced countries in the world

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NOW WATCH: Dramatic Video Of Sea Rescue Off Scotland Right Before Fishing Boat Sinks

Every wine connoisseur knows the value of an aged wine, but few get the opportunity to sample 170-year-old Champagne from the bottom of the sea.

In 2010, divers found 168 bottles of bubbly while exploring a shipwreck off the Finnish Aland archipelago in the Baltic Sea. When they tasted the wine, they realized it was likely more than a century old.

A chemical analysis of the ancient libation has revealed a great deal about how this 19th-century wine was produced.

"After 170 years of deep-sea aging in close-to-perfect conditions, these sleeping Champagne bottles awoke to tell us a chapter of the story of winemaking," the researchers wrote in the study, published April 20 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deep sea bubbly

In the study, led by Philippe Jeandet, a professor of food biochemistry at the University of Reims, Champagne-Ardenne in France, researchers analyzed the chemical composition of the wine from the shipwreck and compared it to that of modern Champagne.

Unexpectedly, "we found that the chemical composition of this 170-year-old Champagne … was very similar to the composition of modern Champagne," Jeandet told Live Science. However, there were a few notable differences, "especially with regard to the sugar content of the wine," he said.

Engravings on the part of the cork touching the wine suggest it was produced by the French Champagne houses Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, Heidsieck, and Juglar, the researchers said.

A chemical analysis of the wine revealed that it contained a lot more sugar than modern Champagnes. The 170-year-old beverage had a sugar content of about 20 ounces per gallon (150 grams per liter), whereas today's Champagnes have only about 0.8 ounces to 1 oz/gal (6 to 8 g/L).

This high sugar content was characteristic of people's tastes at the time, the researchers said. In fact, in 19th-century Russia, it was common for people to add sugar to their wine at dinner, Jeandet added.

"This is why Madame Clicquot decided to create a specific Champagne with about 300 grams [of sugar] per liter," which is about six to seven times the sugar content of Coca-Cola, he said.

In addition, the Champagne contained higher concentrations of certain minerals — including iron, copper and table salt (sodium chloride) — than modern wines.

The wine likely contained high levels of iron because 19th-century winemakers used vessels that contained metal, the researchers said. The high copper levels likely came from the use of copper sulfate as an anti-fungal agent sprayed on the grapes — the beginnings of what later became known as the "Bordeaux mixture."

Although one of the bottles from the shipwreck was contaminated by seawater, this is probably not the reason for the wine's high salt content. Rather, it's more likely it came from the sodium-chloride-containing gelatin used to stabilize the wine, Jeandet said.

'Spicy,' 'leathery' taste

The chemical composition closely matched the descriptions of wine-tasting experts, who described the aged Champagne as "grilled, spicy, smoky and leathery, together with fruity and floral notes."

The researchers were amazed by how well the wine had aged under the sea.The Champagne from the shipwreck was remarkably well preserved, as evidenced by the low levels of acetic acid, the characteristic vinegary taste of spoiled wine.

The wine was found at a depth of more than 160 feet (50 meters), where it's dark and exposed to a constant, low temperature — "perfect slow-aging conditions for good evolution of wine," Jeandet said.

Some winemakers are already experimenting with aging bottles of wine in seawater for extended periods.

"I'm sure there are people that are ready to spend a lot of money to have the privilege of saying to their friends, 'I put on the table a bottle that has been aged 10 years at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea,'" he said.

Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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BRUSSELS (AP) — Late to the rescue, European leaders came through Thursday with pledges of big ships, aircraft and a tripling in funds to save lives in the Mediterranean after the deaths at sea of more than 1,300 migrants over the past three weeks, and agreed to lay the groundwork for military action against traffickers.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, whose country has been faced with almost daily tragedy as rescuers plucked bodies from frigid waters, called it "a giant step forward."

Within days, Britain's aptly named HMS Bulwark and the German supply ship Berlin could be steaming to the heart of the Mediterranean in the biggest sign of the European Union's belated commitment to contain the tide of rickety ships making the perilous crossing.

The pledge of resources came as victims of the worst-ever migrant disaster in the Mediterranean were buried Thursday in Malta. Two dozen wooden caskets containing the only bodies recovered from a weekend capsizing off Libya that left at least 800 migrants feared dead were laid out for a memorial service.

None of the bodies was identified: One casket had "No. 132" scrawled on it, referring to the number of the DNA sample taken from the corpse in case a relative ever comes to claim it.

For several years as death tolls have mounted, EU leaders have done little more than deplore the loss of lives and mark tragedies with moments of silence and wreaths instead of fundamental action. When Libya disintegrated politically after the overthrow of longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi and unrest spread in neighboring countries, Europe failed to take forceful action.

On Thursday, EU leaders pledged to do more, committing at least nine vessels to monitor the waters for traffickers and intervene in case of need. Other member states, from France to Latvia, also lined up more ships, planes and helicopters that could be used to rescue migrants.The member states agreed to triple funding to 9 million euros ($9.7 million) a month for the EU's border operation that patrols the Mediterranean.

They also assigned EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to line up the diplomatic options that would allow EU militaries to strike against the boats used by traffickers. Officials said the lack of a strong Libyan government would likely make U.N. backing necessary.

"Leaders have already pledged significantly greater support, including many more vessels, aircraft and experts" than had been anticipated before the summit, EU President Donald Tusk said.

Despite the sudden deluge of goodwill, huge questions remained about whether it would be enough to defeat the smugglers and human traffickers.

"Right now, it's a question of fixing yesterday's errors," French President Francois Hollande said.

He said the EU would hold a summit in Malta with African countries by this summer to see how the continents can work together to better deal with a crisis that has grown dramatically in recent years.

In contrast to the Italian premier, the head of another Mediterranean nation on the frontline of the tragedies was far less enthusiastic.For tiny Malta, the smallest EU member state with a population of 450,000, the summit produced nothing particularly new, apart from a fresh resolve to break up the smuggling networks.

The assets being proposed "will never be enough," Malta's prime minister, Joseph Muscat said. "It is definitely not enough if the numbers that are being communicated about prospective migratory flows are anything to go by."

Over the past week alone, more than 10,000 people have been plucked from the high seas between Italy and Libya as desperate migrants fleeing war, repression and poverty threw their lot in with smugglers who charged $1,000 to $2,000 for a spot on overcrowded and unseaworthy boats to make the perilous crossing.

At least 1,300 people have died in April alone, putting 2015 on track to be the deadliest year ever.

Ending that is Europe's main challenge. Even optimists say any measures agreed at Thursday's summit would not fully stem the tide of unstable ships crossing the Mediterranean.

But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte insisted that Europe should not take the brunt of blame. "We also ask that Africa, the source of the problem, also collectively takes up its responsibility," Rutte said. "Last time I checked Libya was in Africa, not Europe."

Over the past year, what little political structure Libya had has collapsed. There are two rival governments, neither with any real authority, and each fighting the other on the ground. Local militias hold sway around the country, some of them with hard-line Islamist ideologies, and the Islamic State group has emerged as a strong and brutal force.

The makes any military action against traffickers there even more complicated."Any kind of military action can only be based on international law," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "There are two possibilities: either a U.N. Security Council Resolution or a unity government in Libya. We have neither at the moment."

Europe itself was hardly a picture of unity when it came to the difficult issue of resettling migrants.

Countries like Germany, Sweden, France and Italy have dealt with a disproportionate number of asylum requests while many eastern and Baltic member states take hardly any. Five of the 28 member states are handling almost 70 percent of the migrants coming in.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, two weeks away from a national election in which immigration is a major issue, said Britain was not planning to take more in migrants that had no reason to come to the U.K. British vessels would take migrants "to the nearest safe country, mostly likely Italy," he said.

Still, despite the differences, Finland's prime minister Alexander Stubb was hopeful that this time Europe could put up a show of solidarity.

"I hope we'll get it right this time," he said.

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