Over a century after these ships set sail for the South Pole, their wrecks are inspiring new exploration

After 80 years on the bottom of the Labrador Sea, Terra Nova looks very different than when it carried famed British explorer Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole.

“It’s really a wreck, in bad condition but interesting because of that,” said David Mearns, the co-chief scientist on the Canadian-led expedition to document the ship.

He helped find the ship in 2012 off the coast of Greenland but this is the first scientific mission to bring back detailed imagery.

It’s the second shipwreck this Royal Canadian Geographical Society expedition is examining using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and an underwater submersible.

Around a week ago, the expedition was the first to study the wreck of the Quest, the ship that carried another famous explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, on his final trip to Antarctica.

Canadian technology creating 3D images

Overnight, the teams on board the research ship Atlantis used an ROV to map the wreck of the Terra Nova, which was launched in 1884 before it carried Scott on his final expedition in 1910.

Now sitting under 170 metres of water about 30 kilometres south of Greenland after it sank in 1943, Terra Nova’s double wheels — which the crew used to steer the 57-metre sail and steam ship — are clearly visible. Other parts of the ship like the rudder, boilers and steam winches are still visible.

Technology developed by Waterloo, Ont.-based Voyis is not just capturing images and video but also mapping the entire ship in three dimensions.

It’s not just a better picture but also better science, marine biologist Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser says.

“The 3D model allows me to have the full context. So I know not just, ‘I’m on the bow [or] I’m on the stern,’ but that this particular sample is 30 metres from the bow,” she said.

That makes her research more quantitative — and it will create a detailed snapshot in time for future research.

Dwight Coleman, the other co-chief scientist on the expedition, says the technology has improved considerably in the past few years. Scientists no longer have to try to stitch many photos by hand to get a big-picture look.

But Coleman, who is director of ocean imaging at the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, says this expedition’s focus on northern shipwrecks also helps fill in gaps in our knowledge.

“There hasn’t been many that have been studied in this amount of detail so we’re quite fortunate to be here where we are now with the camera system that we have to be able to collect this information. So it’s really, I think, one of a kind,” he said.

‘Halo of fish’

Meyer-Kaiser is also interested in what moved into the Terra Nova after humans left it.

Compared to the barren sea floor around it, the ship forms an oasis for fish who have made it their home.

“It has this halo of fish, particularly redfish that are living around the wreck and using that structure for shelter and habitat,” she said.

Meyer-Kaiser wants to understand what happens when things made by humans end up in the oceans, including shipwrecks and infrastructure like oil platforms and bridges.

“If we want to predict the impacts of new things we’re putting in the ocean, then we can look at old things that have been in the ocean from human activities for a while,” she said.

Full-circle moment

Royal Canadian Geographical Society president John Geiger, who is leading the expedition, says exploring Terra Nova and Quest — the ship that Shackleton died aboard — is a full-circle moment.

“They really were the cutting edge exploration vehicles of their time,” said Geiger of the last ships to carry Scott and Shackleton.

Now, more than 100 years after their expeditions, they’re being documented by the newest ocean technology.

“We are, you know, essentially doing what they were doing but in a very different time, and learning from what they experienced, ” he said.