Scientists Have an ‘Oh My Gosh’ Moment While Searching for What They Thought Was a Shipwreck

Scientists searching for what they thought to be a shipwreck found something entirely unexpected in the Gulf of Mexico instead.

“It looked like a shipwreck,” Thomas Heathman, a Texas A&M-Galveston marine biology student, told KHOU-TV of the image that was first seen on an acoustic survey. “And then once we get down there, we see this structure that we’ve never seen before. Never seen anything like it in the northern Gulf of Mexico.”

A robotic vehicle tethered to the Okeanos Explorer, a vessel owned by the National and Atmospheric Administration, was on its 12th dive last week as part of the expedition in the Gulf. At a depth of more than 1,900 meters, the robot picked up images of bacterial mats, bamboo corals, shrimp and other sea life.  

Approaching the area of the suspected shipwreck though, the researchers saw not a man-made object but a natural phenomenon, according to NOAA’s dive report.

Read full story and see all the pictures here

Source: The Blaze