On October 31, 2014, Italy ended "Mare Nostrum"— a year long naval mission aimed at rescuing would-be migrants in peril trying to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.

During its existence the Italian Navy estimated that they saved the lives of 100,000 people, though the operation was deemed expensive and in direct opposition to Europe's anti-immigration policies. 

Some experts and human rights advocates told The New York Times that stopping program — which cost $10 million a month — was a huge mistake.

Mare Nostrum has been replaced by the cheaper "Operation Triton" under the command of the EU's border patrol agency Frontex. With just six ships and patrol boats, two planes, and one helicopter, Triton's goal isn't so much rescuing migrants as it is protecting Europe's borders from them. 

The following map shows exactly how the EU has failed the migrants risking their lives to seek a better life in Europe. Mare Nostrum (in red) simply had greater reach where it is needed most.

It should be no surprise then that some 1,800 people have died so far in 2015 crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, compared to just 56 deaths at the same time last year. And as geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer notes, "peak migration season (typically May through September) hasn’t yet begun."

The International Organization on Migration (IOM) has warned that, based on current figures, the migrant death toll on the Mediterranean this year could top 30,000.

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A thick sheet of winter ice on Lake Michigan has melted away revealing scores of shipwrecks that can be spotted from the sky.

"With Lake Michigan ice gone for the season the crystal clear, deep blue waters of northern Michigan are back," the  Traverse City Coast Guard station wrote on its Facebook page. 

The ships were spotted by the Coast Guard aircrew while out on a standard patrol mission. They began to notice shipwrecks beneath the water and photographed ones they came across.  

The Traverse City Coast Guard station began posting images of the wrecks to its Facebook page in an effort to identify some of the remains in a series dubbed "Shipwreck Sunday."

The guard station thanked its fans and followers for the "frenzy over the beauty of our home state and our lakes."

Check out the Traverse City Coast Guard station's Facebook page for more photos.

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Obviously, shipwrecks represent a tragedy, the loss of life or property or both. But shipwrecks can also be dazzlingly beautiful, adding character and history to otherwise unbroken natural vistas. As far as discarded junk goes, you really can't beat the ruins of ships for pure atmosphere. All across the world, the rotting remains of boats that were forgotten due to accident or obsolescence still sit like glimpse into our own future downfall. Check out seven of the most beautiful shipwrecks in the world. 

1. Kiptopeke's Concrete Fleet
Cape Charles, Virginia

 The only remaining brethren to the S.S. Selma above, the nine ships that make up the Kiptopeke Breakwater, are the remainder of the 12 concrete vessels commissioned by Woodrow Wilson in 1918. The president actually commissioned 24 of the boats, but only 12 were ever made. In 1948, the nine ships were hauled to Kiptopeke Beach and scuttled to provide storm protection to what was, at the time, the Chesapeake Ferry Terminal. The ferry is no more, but the sturdy concrete ships remain. Many of them have deteriorated with age, showing the strands of rebar holding the things together. More than any of the metal ships on this list, the cement fleet in Kiptopeke Bay resemble sunken temples. 

2. Bay Of Nouadhibou Ship Graveyard
Nouadhibou, Mauritania

Shipbreaking is hard and expensive work, so in places where the laws are... malleable regarding the practice, sometimes boats are simply scuttled and illegally left for dead. Such is the case in Mauritania's Bay of Nouadhibou which stands as the world's largest ship graveyard. Once unscrupulous captains found that they could simply abandon their unwanted vessels in the bay for a small bribe, it started filling up with the rusting hulks of dead ships, and continues to collect them to this day. Despite concerns regarding the rust, paint, and chemicals that may be leaking into the waters of the bay, the deteriorating ships have come to provide habitats for a great deal of undersea life.

3. S.S. Selma
Galveston, Texas

For a short time during World War I, America decided to start making ships out of concrete to save on steel. Only a few of the vessels were ever created, and even fewer remain, but one outstanding example is the S.S. Selma off the coast of Texas' Galveston Island. The ship was abandoned in the sea after it was fatally wounded by a collision with a jetty. However this was not the end of the story for the old boat. During Prohibition, anti-booze authorities would take caches of confiscated hooch out to the wreck and destroy them where there would be no hope for recovery. I'm sure they didn't drink any of it while they were out there.  

4. Navagio Beach
Zakynthos, Greece

As though a secluded cove beach on a tiny Greek island were not magical enough, Zakynthos Island's Navagio Beach also holds the rusting wreckage of a smuggler's ship. In 1983 the ship known as the Panagiotis was carrying contraband loads of cigarettes, booze, and according to some reports, humans. The authorities caught wind of the illicit cargo and tracked down the ship while it was still at sea. The Panagiotis fled, but the weather was poor and in their haste, they ran the ship aground into what is now sometimes called, "Smuggler's Cove." Today the wreck is still there, the only mar on the otherwise pristine beach. Although surprisingly it makes it all the more attractive. 

5. Özlem Shipwreck
Batumi, Georgia

The poor, broken Özlem. Turkish for "Desire," this little blue ship looks like the only thing it desires is to not be broken in half. After running aground right where in the very spot it sits to this day, the ship was simply abandoned. It has since broken completely in half as it rusts away into the gently waters surrounding it. It seems like a peaceful way to go. 

6. S.S. Ayerfield
Homebush, Australia

While most shipwrecks are beautiful just the way they are, the S.S. Ayerfield in Australia's Homebush Bay does them one better with a small forest of mangrove trees growing in its corpse. Homebush Bay was once a thriving commercial port with large freighters regularly moving in and out. But after being contaminated by toxic waste, the port shut down and was remade as a residential area. When the trade ceased a number of ships were simply left in the bay to die. One of which was the S.S. Ayerfield, which today has been boarded by a lush mangrove thicket. Hanging down every side like it's nature's drunken party boat, the wild branches make the industrial husk look like a truly singular ruin.   

7. Wreck of the Sub Marine Explorer
San Telmo, Panama

The only submarine on the list, this rotting iron coffin stands as the remains of the first submarine capable of rising and diving without help from the surface. Built in 1866 by a German inventor, the ship was a marvel in its day, using an innovative ballast system that would sink or raise the ship at will. Unfortunately, the brave sailors that experimented with the ship during its trial run began coming down with an unexplained "fever," that we now know to have been decompression sickness, or "the bends." Even the ships creator died of the so-called fever. Eventually the ship slipped out of memory until the wreck was rediscovered in 2001.  

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Divers off the coast of Madagascar claim they’ve found sunken treasure belonging to Captain Kidd. 

A 110-pound silver bar that is believed to have belonged to the legendary pirate was shown off to local media this week, according to the BBC. One of Kidd’s ships sunk during the 17th century near where the press conference occurred.

Pictures show the bar inscribed with an “S,” an “L," what appears to be the number 95 and a few other markings.

The dive team claims the silver bar was found in the bowels of a wrecked ship called the Adventure Gallery, according to Discovery News. The boat was discovered along with more than a dozen others in a shallow bay off the coast of Saint Marie, another island off the coast of Madagascar.

"We discovered 13 ships in the bay," Marine archaeologist Barry Clifford told reporters, according to Discovery News. "We've been working on two of them over the last 10 weeks. One of them is the Fire Dragon, the other is Captain Kidd's ship, the Adventure Galley.”

Another expert, archaeologist John de Bry, told Discovery News that the ship's wreckage and silver bar are “"irrefutable proof that this is indeed the treasure of the Adventure Gallery.”

Kidd was originally hired by British authorities to hunt down pirates and capture French ships, according to the BBC. But he soon became a pirate and then made the fatal mistake of plundering a British ship at the end of the 17th century.

Clifford brought a crew to film the expedition searching the bay for bounty, according to Discovery News. His cameras captured the moment the bar was found and brought to the surface.

"Captain's Kidd's treasure is the stuff of legends. People have been looking for it for 300 years. To literally have it hit me on the head - I thought what the heck just happened to me. I really didn't expect this," he told the BBC.

"There's more down there. I know the whole bottom of the cavity where I found the silver bar is filled with metal. It's too murky down there to see what metal, but my metal detector tells me there is metal on all sides.”

The Adventure Gallery is believed to have sunk a few years before Kidd was executed in 1701 in England.

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The Antikythera shipwreck off the coast of Greece is the gift that keeps on giving for underwater treasure hunters.

This summer alone, divers recovered more than 50 artifacts from the wreckage: the remains of a bone flute, fine glassware and ceramics, a chess-like piece from an ancient board game, and even a bronze armrest that researchers say may have once fit on a throne. 

“This shipwreck is far from exhausted,” Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in a statement released last week. “Every single dive on it delivers fabulous finds, and reveals how the ‘1 percent’ lived in the time of Caesar.”

This summer's expedition was part of a long-term research project that it began in 2014 in collaboration with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. The project is the first scientific excavation of the wreck since Greek fishermen discovered it in 1900.

The treasure-filled sunken ship dates back to 65 B.C. Last year, undersea excavators found that it covered a much bigger area than previously expected. Their discovery triggered newfound interest in the site, leading the international team of researchers to recover artifacts still buried on the seafloor and to recreate the history of the ship’s final voyage. 

The recent three-week expedition has left the team with the best understanding yet of the shipwreck and its cargo. A metal detection survey revealed the wreck’s debris field, which stretches over an area of about 2,000 square meters.

A team of four divers carefully excavated most of the artifacts from underneath a layer of sand and broken ceramics. Since returning to shore, researchers have created 3-D models of many of the artifacts, and have begun to conduct a series of tests on them, including DNA analysis.

“We were very lucky this year, as we excavated many finds within their context, which gave us the opportunity to take full advantage of all the archaeological information they could provide,” said diving archaeologist Theotokis Theodoulou, in Woods Hole's statement.

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Baja California sank one of Mexico’s Navy boats off of Rosarito Beach in order to turn it into an underwater park for divers.

In addition to becoming an artificial reef, the boat will be joined by three more sunken boats, as well as statues, sculptures, and pyramids. Essentially, it will be a Mexican version of Atlantis.

A similar artificial reef turned tourist attractions can be found off of Catalina Island in California.

Story by Jacob Shamsian and editing by Stephen Parkhurst

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The Spanish galleon San Jose — one of the world's great, long-lost sunken ships — has been found.

The ship was filled with gold, silver, and other valuables when it sunk in 1708. Three hundred and seven years later, the wreckage has been located off the coast of Cartagena, the Colombian government announced.

According to CNN, an American sea exploration company says the treasure could be worth up to $17 billion. It's potentially the biggest sunken ship discovery of all time.

The Colombian team that found the wreckage says bronze cannons that were specially made for the San Jose leave "no doubt" that they have the right ship.

Story by Tony Manfred and editing by Ben Nigh

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In 1708, the Spanish galleon San Jose sank 1,000 feet under the Caribbean waves, near the coast of modern-day Cartagena, Colombia. She was on her way to Spain, bringing a hoard of treasure to fund the Spanish throne against their British enemies in the War of the Spanish Succession.

However, as the San Jose was sailing off of the coast of Colombia, a British warship caught up with her and sent the ship, her vast treasure and the majority of her 600 crew to the bottom of the sea.

The actual location of the wreck has remained a mystery until now. On December 4, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced on Twitter that a joint team of international experts with the country's navy and archaeological society had finally found the remains of the treasure-laden San Jose near the island of Baru.

Understandably, he would not give the actual location to safeguard the site from privateers.

Officials say this discovery is the "Holy Grail" of shipwrecks because of the massive wealth of gold, silver, coins, gems and jewelry aboard. The Colombian government plans to build a museum to house and display the precious artifacts, which experts estimate are worth anywhere between $4 and $17 billion.

The ship was hauling the bounty from Spanish colonies to Spain in order to help fund the Spanish in their war over the Hapsburg territory following the death of Charles II. The British, Spain's main adversary, planned to capture the San Jose, cut off the money supply to Spain and use the treasure for their own financial advantage.

However, just before the British could overtake the ship, an explosion ripped through the San Jose and sent the ship to its watery grave. The English got their wish in cutting off money from going to Spain, but both countries lost the immense treasure. It seems that what Spain and Great Britain lost, Colombia has gained.

However, this actually isn't the first time the San Jose has been found. In 1982, U.S. company Sea Search Armada announced it had found the wreckage, but has been fighting with the Colombia government over their share of the wealth. According to established maritime law at the time, treasure-hunters would share half of their reward with the government and keep the rest as profit.

Colombia decided they didn't want to share the treasure and, two years later, overturned the law to instead give the company just a small 5 percent finder's fee, instead of half of the wealth. The Sea Search Armada filed lawsuits in both the U.S. and Colombia to try to get their claim back. The U.S. dismissed the case while Colombia's Supreme Court says the treasure needs to be recovered before anything can be settled.

Regardless of who gets the treasure, the main point is that we've found the wreckage. Now let's just get it to the surface so we can see what marvels the sea has been hiding from us.

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Remains of as many as 33 whaling ships that sank off Alaska's Arctic coast in 1871 have been discovered by archaeologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The recovered parts include battered hulls of at least two ships.

Some of the material discovered included anchors, fasteners and ballast and brick-lined pots that were used to make whale blubber into oil.

The discovery was made by the team working under the Maritime Heritage Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

"Earlier research by a number of scholars suggested that some of the ships that were crushed and sunk might still be on the seabed," Noaa archaeologist Brad Barr said in a statement. "But until now, no one had found definitive proof of any of the lost fleet beneath the water."

The shipwrecks were revealed as a result of melting Arctic ice due to climate change, archaeologists said. The discovery, after nearly 144 years of sinking of the fleet, highlights some of the impacts of global warming in the region, including diminishing sea ice and melting permafrost, the frozen layer of soil or rock.

On 12 September 1871, over 1,200 whalers aboard 33 whaling vessels were stranded in the Arctic Ocean as their ships were trapped by pack ice. "The ships were destroyed in a matter of weeks."

However, captains, crew, officers and some of their families on board were all rescued by seven nearby whaling ships, archaeologists said. But to save the a large number of whalers, the rescuing fleets had to throw away their precious cargo of whale oil and bone as well as the expensive whaling gear to make room for the survivors. The incident marked "the demise of commercial whaling in the United States", they said.

According to the Noaa team, with less ice in the Arctic as a result of climate change, they now have more access to potential shipwreck sites. Traces of ship gear salvaged from the wreckage and scattered timber were also found stranded on isolated beaches in the region in September 2015, they said.

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More than a century since the RMS Titanic sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, an Australian billionaire has announced his plans to resurrect the iconic ship.

It's called Titanic II. And after a few years of stalled plans, businessman and politician Clive Palmer recently confirmed it will hit the water by 2018.

Palmer's vision for the new luxury liner will be nearly identical to the original Titanic. It will feature a crew of 900 (original: 885), measure 885 feet in length (original: 882), feature nine decks (original: nine), and will reach a top speed of 24 knots (original: 24 knots).

The biggest difference?

While the original Titanic carried enough lifeboats to rescue 1,178 people, Titanic II's biggest priority is making sure there are lifeboats for all, reports the Belfast Telegraph. In 2013, Palmer said it will be "the most safe cruise ship in the world" upon its launch.

"We want to recreate in Titanic II the whole experience, the wonder, that was in Titanic," the billionaire said in a promotional video. "And I think we can do that."

Blue Star Line, Palmer's cargo and passenger shipping company, notes that Titanic II will feature all the same classes and dining options as the original.

First-class passengers will have access to high-end restaurants, while third-class passengers will crowd into an upscale cafeteria. And keeping consistent with the original 1912 design, there will be no TVs or personal computers onboard.

The ship will also stay faithful to the original Titanic's grand staircase and Marconi room, which allowed the operator to communicate with navigators on the shore. (In the Titanic II, the Marconi room will be purely for show.)

Blue Star Line hasn't started selling any tickets to the new ship's maiden voyage. But even with the disaster that happened more than 100 years ago, something tells us people will be willing to leave the past behind.

What's the worst that could happen?

To see the entire walk-through of Titanic II, check out the promotional video below:

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Shipwrecks in the Caribbean have been used as an indication of hurricane activity, finds new research that could shed light on the relationship of global warming and these storms. 

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, considered records of Spanish shipwrecks in the region and correlated those with tree-ring records.

The results found a staggering drop in hurricane activity of 75 percent in the years 1645-1715, coinciding with lower sunspot activity and cooler temperatures on Earth, providing important insights for future weather forecasts.

“We found that in the years when many ships wrecked in the Caribbean, the trees in Florida Keys showed the same signal that trees show during hurricanes,” says lead author Valerie Trouet, an associate professor in the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, in a telephone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.

“So, that gave an indication that we could use shipwreck records as a proxy for hurricane activity.”

When hurricanes assail the Florida coastline, trees lose branches, as well as leaves and needles. Because trees rely on these appendages for photosynthesis, and thereby for growth, in a year when they are struck by such storms – and the year following – these activities are restricted, resulting in much narrower tree rings.

That's why Florida coastal tree-ring records give a good indication of hurricane activity in the area.

The team then looked at Spanish shipwreck records for the region, in part because they were maintained meticulously, in part because the Spaniards started visiting the Caribbean earlier than any of the other colonizing nations.

In looking at the past five centuries, the researchers found that the 75 percent drop in hurricanes between 1645-1715 coincided with a known climatic event, the Maunder Minimum, which was a time of cooler temperatures on Earth, including the oceans.

“The number of hurricanes is to a large extent dependent on the temperature of the oceans. So, with cooler oceans, you get fewer hurricanes,” Dr. Trouet tells the Monitor. “Basically, you need ocean temperatures above 26.8/26.9 degrees Celsius to produce hurricanes. That’s why you get hurricanes in the Caribbean and Asia, but not off the coast of England or up in Maine, because the temperatures there simply aren’t high enough.”

This new study is important because it gives us a deeper glimpse into the history of hurricanes, and into the factors that affect them.

While there has been previous work looking at the chronology of these storms, most of that has employed data from lake sediment, which generally provides a resolution down to the century level.

This new method brings that down to 10-15 years, or even an annual scale, as well as providing a tool that can consider regional variation, rather than just focusing on global trends.

Perhaps most interesting of all, however, was the link they found with levels of solar radiation.

“The relationship between hurricanes and the energy budget of the Earth is changing – greenhouse emissions are changing that – and we don’t really know how hurricanes will react to this change,” says Trouet.

So the correlation they found between the Maunder Minimum and a huge lull in hurricane activity was critical.

Of course, “you can never fully exclude the possibility that it is a coincidence or that other factors came into play (e.g., technological advances, wars, etc.),” as Trouet herself admits in a follow-up email. “That being said, we have done all possible sensitivity tests that we could think of to verify our results.”

The researchers compared the percentage of shipwrecks to the absolute number of Spanish ships in the Caribbean at any given time. They considered the number of years per decade that saw more than one shipwreck, rather than just using the absolute numbers of wrecks.

“We are therefore quite confident that it is the climatic situation during the Maunder Minimum (MM) that has caused the shipwreck drop and not other factors,” says Trouet.

Going forward, there is already interest from the other side of the pond to look at a database of shipwrecks off the coast of England.

Trouet herself would like to expand her own study area up the Atlantic coast and into the Gulf of Mexico, maybe into Asia, too, if there are decent records.

“Historians are also interested: this was a period of lots of historical change in the Caribbean, as well as slavery, piracy,” Trouet tells the Monitor. “Is there a link between low hurricane activity and historical events or trends?”

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A computer game company has produced an animation showing the sinking of the Titanic in real time. Vintage Digital Revival LLC is crowdfunding to make an "accurate and respectful" game based on the history of the ship.

Produced by Joe Daunt.

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Hundred of old and decrepit tugboats, warships, fishing boats, and ferries used to rot and rust in the muck of Arthur Kill, a waterway that separates Staten Island and New Jersey. Now, only 25 remain.

Produced by Zach Wasser. Video courtesy of Chad Aaronson.

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Researchers say they believe the ship that 18th century explorer Capt. James Cook used to sail around the world is still submerged somewhere in Rhode Island's Newport Harbor, but it'll take a lot of work and money to identify it.

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, which is leading the search effort, said at a news conference in Providence on Wednesday that it has narrowed its search to a group of five sunken wrecks.

Kevin Sumption, director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, said he's "thrilled" the search has reached this point.

"This isn't a process that can be rushed," he said. "People would love us to have an instant result, but there is no such thing as instant results in maritime archaeology."

The vessel

Nearly 250 years ago, Capt. James Cook ran aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef during a voyage to the South Pacific to observe the planet Venus. His ship was the Endeavour, an ugly and awkward little vessel that improbably helped him become the first European to chart Australia's east coast.

Cook used the Endeavour to claim Australia for the British during his historic 1768-71 voyage.

"The Endeavour is considered to be the founding vessel for Australia," said Kathy Abbass, founder and executive director of the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project. "She's important in all of the Pacific Rim countries, she's important to England and she's important as well to the whole world because of the scientific information brought back."

Its demise

The Endeavour was part of a fleet of 13 ships the British scuttled during the Revolutionary War in 1778 to blockade Newport Harbor from the French, Abbass said.

It was listed in the records under a different name, the Lord Sandwich.

In 2014, the Australian National Maritime Museum signed an agreement to help the Rhode Island group find the lost vessel. The museum hopes to locate the wreck in time for the 250th anniversary celebrations of Cook's voyage.

What researchers know

The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project recently used a grant from the Australian National Maritime Museum to locate documents in London identifying the groups of ships in that fleet and where each was scuttled.

The nonprofit thinks the Endeavour is part of a group of five sunken wrecks.

It already has mapped nine of the 13 sites in the harbor, including four of the five sites in that group, Abbass said.

"We know there were five. We know we mapped four. We think we can find the fifth one," Abbass said. "That's for this year, to find the fifth one."

What they don't know

Remote sensing data appears to show the fifth site, but it could be badly disturbed, Abbass said. She said she won't know for sure until divers investigate.

Even if all five sites are located, Abbass said she may not find enough conclusive evidence to say that one of them is the Endeavour.

What's next

Abbass said she'll need to raise millions for archaeological field work and to build a facility for artifacts.

She estimates the field work would cost about $1 million and the facility would cost $7.5 million.

If the Endeavour is found, it will belong to Rhode Island, she added.

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We are closer than ever to deciphering what has been called the world’s first computer. The device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, has been puzzling scientists for more than a century ever since it was discovered in an ancient Greek shipwreck in 1901.

In an event held at the Katerina Laskaridis Historical Foundation Library in Greece in June, an international team of researchers announced the results of a lengthy investigation into what might be the oldest computer in the world. What they found confirms many things we already knew about it, while also providing some tantalizing new details, Gizmodo reports.

And it will also shed new light on a period of Greek history we know little about.

A hidden meaning

When it was first discovered, scientists weren’t quite sure what the Antikythera Mechanism was – it was found amidst a wealth of bronze and marble greek statues and, by comparison, looked like an unsuspecting, sediment-encrusted hunk of bronze.

But shortly after it was retrieved, the device split apart, revealing the remnants of an intricate system of gears that scientists believed once functioned as a sort of mechanical computer.

It was likely used by ancient Greek astronomers to study the sky.

The device, which has been dated back to sometime between 200 and 70 B.C., was more than a millennium ahead of its time — nothing else like it would surface for more than a thousand years.

The team used state-of-the-art x-ray scanning and imaging equipment to reconstruct the mechanism and figure out how it works. But what they hadn’t realized was that the techniques they were using would also allow them to decipher explanatory text carved into the device, team member Mike Evans told the AP.

They are now able to read about 3,500 characters of this text, which functions as a sort of description label, giving them a better idea of what it is.

"It's a lot of detail for us because it comes from a period from which we know very little about Greek astronomy and essentially nothing about the technology, except what we gather from here," said team member Alexander Jones, a professor of the history of ancient science at New York University, to the AP. "So these very small texts are a very big thing for us."

A philosopher's instructional device

The team says the mechanism was a calendar of the sun and the moon. It showed the phases of the moon, the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, the position of the planets, and it predicted eclipses, the AP reports. It was ‘a philosopher's instructional device' of sorts.

"It was not a research tool, something that an astronomer would use to do computations, or even an astrologer to do prognostications, but something that you would use to teach about the cosmos and our place in the cosmos," Jones said. "It's like a textbook of astronomy as it was understood then, which connected the movements of the sky and the planets with the lives of the ancient Greeks and their environment."

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Off the south coast of Massachusetts sits Chappaquiddick, a long, narrow strip of land that — depending on the tides — is either an island or a peninsula that's barely connected to Martha's Vineyard.

A long beach runs along the east side of the island, beckoning tourists and locals to its sandy shores and wildlife sanctuaries.

But under the beach chairs and picnic blankets lies a mystery 100 years in the making — an old shipwreck, buried in the sand.

For the most part, the ship's remains are invisible to the casual beach goer. But every now and again, a storm will uncover the pieces and reignite speculation about the origins of the doomed vessel, which have yet to be resolved.

According to the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, where we first learned about the wreck, the ship has been uncovered at least three times since Hurricane Sandy blew over the island in 2012.

Here's a photograph of the shipwreck's remains, taken in February 2016:

It may not look like much, but the wreck is a gem in the eyes of experts.

"It's in remarkably good shape," marine biologist and shipwreck diver Arnold Carr told Tech Insider. "It hasn't weathered that much nor have marine worms eaten it."

Marine worms, sometimes called ship worms, are a species of clam that eats wood, making it the bane of marine archaeologists working on saltwater sites.

Carr, a Martha's Vineyard native, said that rough winds sweeping over the island for at least the last two decades have periodically uncovered and recovered the wreck. "It'll disappear for a year or two then be exposed again," he said.

When the ship does appear, its timbers, planking, and iron bolts stick out from the sand. Carr said the wreck is between 60 and 70 feet long and 40 feet wide, and lies parallel to the water. Under the sand, he added, there might be more of the wreck, bringing the total length to 100 feet or more.

"It probably got blown ashore," he said, adding that violent storms near Chesapeake Bay make it a treacherous area to sail. Colloquially, the area is known as "the graveyard of the Atlantic."

Carr, whose diving outfit American Underwater Search and Survey discovered the wreck of the Portland 100 years after it was lost at sea, says that the enigmatic schooner probably dates to the mid-1800s, given the construction of the ship — the iron bolts in particularly — and historical data he's gathered from public archives.

"Within one mile of the site there's at least three ships that sank in the area," Carr said. "My best estimate would be 1850s or early '60s."

At first, Carr said, he thought the wreck might part be the Christina, which went down in a blizzard in 1866. Writing in the Martha's Vineyard Gazette, reporter Tom Dunlop described the wreck as "one of the most notorious disasters on island waters in the 19th century." All but one of the Christina's six crew died in the wreck, with the lone survivor losing his fingers and feet to frostbite.

Carr has since changed his mind, saying that the location doesn't quite match with where he'd expect the Christina to be.

Now he thinks it may be the Silver Bell, a schooner which sank in the 1850s — but records from the time are scant. One report from 1863 lists the ship only as "Schooner Silver Bell, Cape Poge. Total Loss."

It's tempting to connect the dots: Cape Poge is on the northwest side of Chappaquiddick Island, and no remains of the Silver Bell have ever been found.

But for archaeologists to identify the ship, a research team would need permission from the state and local governments to excavate.

For now, the ship remains hidden and preserved under the sand, capturing the imaginations of future generations of shipwreck hunters.

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NOW WATCH: Drone footage shows incredible shipwreck graveyard in Barbados

One of the oldest shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has finally been found in Central New York.

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Footage of six shipwrecks was captured by a drone in Carlisle Bay, in Barbados, a popular diving spot.

One of the wrecks is the Canadian freighter "Cornwallis" which was sunk in 1942 by a German U-boat.

Produced by Claudia Romeo

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The remains of tens of thousands of ships litter the floor of the Black Sea, their wreckage telling the stories of war, trade, and the risks of crossing a massive body of water. There are ships on the cold sea floor there that have never been seen before: vessels from the Ottoman and Byzantine empires, from Venetian and Genoan merchant colonies, from slave traders coming out of Central Asia, and more.

A recent expedition using new technology to help map the sea floor has just revealed more than 40 previously unknown shipwrecks, nearly perfectly preserved, since they lie deep on the floor of the Black Sea in a region where there's no oxygen. For that reason, the wrecks have been kept safe from organisms that would normally chew through ropes and wood.

"The wrecks are a complete bonus, but a fascinating discovery, found during the course of our extensive geophysical surveys," says Jon Adams, a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton and principle investigator on the sea floor mapping project, in a press release.

The ships are a fascinating bonus historic discovery from a map of the sea floor — and researchers think there's incredible potential for more to be discovered.

Here's what they've found.

The expedition is focused on exploring Bulgarian waters, trying to study how the sea changed over time and how those changes affected people living nearby.

The researchers are using using two Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to survey and map the sea bed.

The flows between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea separate waters and create a zone below 500 feet that is anoxic, very low in oxygen, which helps preserve everything that lies below.

British cargo ship SS Thistlegorm lies off the coast of Ras Mohammed in Egypt.

When it was bombed by the Nazis in 1941, it was carrying weapons, ammunition, and vehicles – some of which you can still see in this video. 

The wreck is a popular diving hotspot.

Produced by Claudia Romeo

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