Beginning last Wednesday, July 17 through this Thursday, July 25, the Nautilus and her two ROVs, Hercules and Argus, will be exploring a shipwreck located in the Gulf of Mexico. The wreckage site was discovered by Shell Oil while scanning a lease location. Because the ship has not yet been identified, it is being called the “Monterrey Shipwreck,” after Shell’s name for their proposed project.

The site will be the deepest shipwreck to be systematically investigated in the Gulf of Mexico. Due to its depth, the wreckage cannot be explored through usual means (through the use of SCUBA teams).

That is where Hercules and Argus come in. A team of scientists will be able to safely view and analyze the site from the Nautilus as it bobs more than 4,000 feet above the actual wreckage.

This particular shipwreck is referred to as “time capsule” wreckage. The ship is suggested to be extremely well preserved due to how deep it is and the lack of nearby oil and gas infrastructure. Using sonar data, the site appears to be tightly contained and an outline of a hull that is 84 feet long and 26 feet wide can be seen.

The goal of this project is to thoroughly map and document the wreck site while also recovering artifacts for analysis and exhibition. The team on the Nautilus is hoping to answer several questions about the wreckage: What is it? Whose ship was it? Why was it out on those particular waters? How was it lost? What caused it to sink? All of these answers may rewrite history and clarify forgotten events in the history of the Gulf of Mexico.

As exciting as studying a newly discovered ship wreck might be, the adventures of the Nautilus as well as Hercules and Argus don’t stop there. Over the next several months, the Nautilus will be studying several fascinating underwater sites. This includes visiting the deepest point in the Caribbean and studying an underwater mountain. The research team will also work off the coast of Puerto Rico and analyze the site of a 7.2 underwater earthquake that caused a tsunami!

They will also be studying underwater volcanos, including Kick’ em Jenny, the most active and dangerous underwater volcano in the Caribbean Sea. Experience these findings with the team from the Nautilus live in the Burke Baker Planetarium here at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Be transported to the ocean floor each day at 1 and 3 p.m. via telepresence technology and rove the sea bottom, making discoveries and interacting live with the Nautilus research team. For more information on this exclusive partnership and to purchase tickets online, click here.