New ocean expedition captures images of 13 WWII shipwrecks from major naval battles
Researchers on the Ocean Exploration Trust vessel Nautilus conducted an archaeological survey of 13 shipwrecks from the Solomon Islands campaign, one of the war's fiercest naval confrontations.
Using advanced remotely operated vehicles equipped with high-definition cameras and submersible drones, they also rediscovered two long-lost vessels, the USS New Orleans and the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Teruzuki.
While some of the wrecks were first located over 30 years ago, the latest expedition allowed for a far more detailed and comprehensive survey, thanks to cutting-edge imaging technology, researchers said.
'This expedition was special, allowing us to film these sites in a manner not possible back then, as well as document other ships, while at the same time sharing our work live to the entire world,' Ocean Exploration Trust president Robert Ballard said in a statement.
The wreck site, known as Iron Bottom Sound, lies in the Solomon Islands between Guadalcanal, Savo, and Nggela islands.
Between August and December 1942, Iron Bottom Sound was the site of five major naval battles during the Second World War, resulting in the loss of more than 20,000 lives, 111 naval vessels, and 1,450 aircraft.
Dozens of shipwrecks lie on the seafloor at this site, just off the coast of Honiara, within a relatively compact area measuring less than 25 nautical miles wide, 40 nautical miles long, and up to 1,400 metres deep.
But fewer than 100 of these American, Japanese, Australian, and New Zealand military ships and planes have been located to date.
'This survey of the ships of the United States, Australia, and Japan will add immeasurably to the understanding of one of the costliest naval campaigns in history, a campaign that hopefully will never be repeated,' said Samuel J Cox, Naval History and Heritage Command director.
In the latest survey, researchers mapped more than 386 square miles of seafloor using the uncrewed surface vehicle DriX, operated by the University of New Hampshire.
The crew spent nearly 140 hours exploring various wrecks using ROVs, some located more than 3,280 feet beneath the ocean's surface.
For the first time, researchers took pictures of the bow that was blown off the World War II heavy cruiser USS New Orleans.
The USS New Orleans was struck by a Japanese 'Long Lance' torpedo during the November 1942 Battle of Tassafaronga, off the coast of Guadalcanal. The powerful explosion sheared off nearly a third of the ship, including its entire bow, and claimed the lives of more than 180 crew members.
'The use of our uncrewed vessel allowed a tremendous increase in exploration efficiency as we were able to continuously map and identify potential targets while the Nautilus was deploying its ROVs,' said Larry Mayer, director of the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire.
'This technological achievement, combined with the tremendous historical significance of our discoveries, made this one of the most rewarding missions I have ever participated in.'
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Another roadblock to unraveling the enigma has been the lack of systematic and sustained field research in a region of hundreds of separate islands, some of which archaeologists have never properly investigated, Brumm said. The researchers do have a theory about the identity of this unidentified ancient hominin, who might represent the earliest evidence of ancient humans crossing oceans to reach islands. 'Our working hypothesis is that the stone tools from Calio were made by Homo erectus or an isolated group of this early Asian hominin (e.g., a creature akin to Homo floresiensis of Flores),' Brumm wrote in an email. In addition to fossils and stone tools on Flores and the tools now found on Sulawesi, researchers have also previously discovered stone tools dating to around 709,000 years ago on the isolated island of Luzon in the Philippines, to the north of Wallacea, suggesting ancient humans were living on multiple islands. Exactly how our early ancestors could have reached the islands to begin with remains unknown. 'Getting to Sulawesi from the adjacent Asian mainland would not have been easy for a non-flying land mammal like us, but it's clear that early hominins were doing it somehow,' Brumm wrote. 'Almost certainly they lacked the cognitive capacity to invent boats that could be used for planned ocean voyages. Most probably they made overwater dispersals completely by accident, in the same way rodents and monkeys are suspected to have done it, by 'rafting' (i.e., floating haplessly) on natural vegetation mats.' John Shea, a professor in the anthropology department at Stony Brook University in New York, said he believes that the new study, while not a game changer, is important and has far-reaching implications for understanding how humans established a global presence. Shea was not involved in the new research. Homo sapiens, or modern humans, are the only species for which there is clear, unequivocal evidence of watercraft use, and if Homo erectus or earlier hominins crossed the ocean to the Wallacean islands, they would have needed something to travel on, Shea said. The waters separating the Wallacean islands are home to sharks and crocodiles and have rapid currents, so swimming wouldn't have been possible, he added. 'If you have ever paddled a canoe or crewed in a sailboat, then you know that putting more than one person in a boat and navigating it successfully requires spoken language, a capacity paleoanthropologists think pre-Homo sapiens hominins did not possess,' Shea said. 'On the other hand, just because some earlier hominins made it to these Wallacean islands does not mean they were successful.' By success, Shea means long-term survival. 'They might have survived a while after arriving, left behind indestructible stone tools, and then became extinct,' Shea said via email. 'After all, the only hominin that is not extinct is us.' Brumm and his colleagues are continuing their investigative work at Calio and other sites across Sulawesi to search for fossils of early humans. There is also a growing body of evidence to suggest that tiny Homo floresiensis was the result of a dramatic reduction in body size over the course of around 300,000 years after Homo erectus became isolated on Flores about 1 million years ago. Animals can scale down in size when living on remote islands due to limited resources, according to previous research. Finding fossils might help researchers understand the evolutionary fate of Homo erectus, if it is the human ancestor who made it to Sulawesi. The world's 11th-largest island and an area more than 12 times the size of Flores, Sulawesi is known for its rich, varied ecological habitats, Brumm said. 'Sulawesi is a bit of a wild card. It is essentially like a mini-continent in of itself,' Brumm noted. 'If Homo erectus became isolated on this island it might not necessarily have evolved into something like the strange new form found on the much smaller Wallacean island of Flores to the south.' Alternatively, Sulawesi could have once been a series of smaller islands, resulting in dwarfism in multiple places across the region, he said. 'I really hope hominin fossils are eventually found on Sulawesi,' Brumm said, 'because I think there's a truly fascinating story waiting to be told on that island.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
