Image Details

Jonathan Blair/Corbis

Scuba divers explore an 11th-century C.E. shipwreck off Serce Limani, on the southwest coast of Turkey. Called the Glass Wreck because of the broken glassware found among its cargo, the ship also carried scores of Byzantine amphoras, clearly visible in the foreground of the photo.

Having sunk in about 100 feet of water, the Glass Wreck was excavated in 1977 using conventional scuba equipment. Until recently, shipwrecks in waters deeper than about 200 feet could not be reached. Today, however, new robotics technologies (see the sidebar to this article) allow marine archaeologists to search the oceans’ deepest waters—where they are beginning to find ancient shipwrecks.