Titanic Expedition

A longitudinal biodiversity survey of the world’s most famous shipwreck and deep-sea artificial reef.

A view of Titanic's reciprocating engine from Titan's belly cam.
Titan glides over one of Titanic's reciprocating engines.
Titan submersible on launch and recovery platform at Titanic dive site.
Dr. Bridget Buxton with Titan during the 2021 Titanic Expedition.
Morgan logs Titan's coordinates during a dive to reference artifact locations.

Titanic Expedition Goals

Dr. Bridget Buxton
Chief Archaeologist

“My primary goal for the Titanic Expedition is to make sure we maximize our time and technology to get the most comprehensive picture of the wreck site ever created, and to make as much as possible freely available online as soon as practical after the expedition. Beyond that, I have a wish-list of specific questions to explore – the dozens of little controversies that occupy so many Titanic books and interest groups. Insofar as we’ll have an opportunity to tell a new story about Titanic through this expedition, I want the focus to be on the experience of the lesser-known victims of the disaster, in perhaps the less glamorous parts of the ship. This series of expeditions is a chance to dismantle a lot of the cultural myths of the Titanic disaster that were used, both then and now, to define Anglo-American ideals of heroism, gender, and class.”

Steve Ross
Marine Biologist

Using HD video, document (identify, count) the fauna of the wreck and surrounding areas, including the water column. When possible, obtain close-up detailed video of fauna for later analysis.
In particular, my goals are to:

  • Focus on the fish community and attached deep-sea corals.
  • Document habitat usage of the observed fauna.
  • Using above data, compare to other sites in the Western North Atlantic in similar depths and across depth zones.
  • Gather observational and ADCP data on bottom currents during dives.
  • Evaluate the site for future missions and start plan development (with OceanGate team and colleagues).
Morgan Breene
Doctoral Candidate

“My goals for the expedition is for the imagery and other data we collect to serve a larger archaeological purpose — we increasingly have the ability to find and study shipwrecks at tremendous depths, and but we are still developing the theoretical frameworks through which to view and study these wrecks as a discipline. I want this series of expeditions to explore Titanic from a more clinical point of view — think about how we are contributing to the discipline more widely through doing this work, rather than simply getting better pictures of the shipwreck. I would like to further Bridget’s point about using this time to highlight the experiences of lesser-known passengers on board, to shed light on experiences of the people we don’t hear about, or whose stories were manipulated at the time and since to fit a specific narrative about customs of the sea, manliness and heroism.”