The 'Titanic' Wreckage Could Entirely Disintegrate in Approximately 30 Years, Experts Say (2024)

As the world fixates on the desperate search for the missing submersible with five passengers that set out to explore the remains of the Titanic, news has re-emerged that what’s left of the doomed Titanic itself is also in trouble.

The ill-fated ocean liner is being attacked by various underwater threats including salt corrosion, deep sea currents, and specific kinds of bacteria — and the ship could disintegrate in the next 30 years, Business Insider reports.

According to the Smithsonian Institution, the bacteria — called Halomonas titanicae (yes, named after the ship) — is slowly destroying it.

This type of bacteria — which was first discovered in 2010 by Henrietta Mann, a researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia — causes structures resembling rusty icicles to form and nibble away at the iron on the ship. This could cause the entire vessel to essentially disintegrate over time. Some estimates say the ship could be completely gone as soon as 2030, Live Science reported in 2019.

“They're kind of like living communities, these rusticles,” Erin Field, a microbiologist at East Carolina University, told Discover magazine in 2022. “They're constantly changing and evolving — much like the icicles that attach to your house that can start to melt and then can regrow.”

In 2019, an expedition team helmed by Victor Vescovo, the CEO of Caladan Oceanic, went down to the site of the wreckage multiple times to document the current state of the ship. What they found was discouraging. According to TIME, a well-known section of the boat called the Captain’s Bathtub was already completely disintegrated.

Leading Titanic researcher Paul-HenryNargeolet, 77, has made dozens of treks down to explore the wreckage — but unfortunately, he is currently missing aboard the Titan submersible along with Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman Dawood, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and British billionaire Hamish Harding.

In 2022, Nargeolet told Discover magazine that the ship's disintegration seemed to be getting worse each time he went down to see it. “Step by step, everything is collapsing," he told the publication.

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The heaviness of the massive vessel has also contributed to the Titanic's deterioration, TIME reported in 2019. Mann told the publication, “If one level deteriorates at the top [of the wreck], it drops to the next one, which means it … impacts on the lower levels. Damage is done layer after layer.”

“Logic tells you [that] more structurally it is damaged, the more quickly it will deteriorate,” she added, TIME reports.

Mann told TIME that she doesn't know exactly when the Titanic will disappear for good, but she estimated the remains had approximately 30 years left before the ship entirely disintegrates.

However, Expedition team leader Vescovo told TIME that the overall damage to the vessel was, in his opinion, less extreme than one might expect, given how long it’s been on the ocean floor. “Biology and current are slowly eroding the wreck as one would expect it to,” he said. “But we should remember that the wreck has been down there 107 years in strong currents and seawater, so it is a matter of not if, but when, the sea will reclaim it in its entirety.”

The Titanic famously sunk after hitting an iceberg on its very first voyage, from England to New York City in 1912. More than 1,500 passengers died in the catastrophe. As of 2021, the Titanic's wreckage became a UNESCO cultural heritage site.

The historic ship made headlines again this week as the search for the Titanic-bound submersible continues.