Exploration
Follow along as an international team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society surveys the wrecks of Quest and Terra Nova in the Labrador Sea
According to the data display in the main lab of R/V Atlantis, the water temperature around the ship is just 2° C. The air can’t be much warmer. I wear a homemade wool sweater, wind-proof jacket, thick socks, and boots as I step outside onto the working deck and take a deep breath. To me, this weather feels like home. A childhood in snowy northern Michigan followed by 15 years of Arctic research have made me cold-hardened and proud of it.
And yet, I have never conducted research in Canada. Until now.
I am Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. I was invited to join the Heroic Age expedition to provide a biological understanding of the wrecks of Quest and Terra Nova. Over the last decade, I have had the opportunity to study the biological communities on some 40 shipwrecks across the western Atlantic and tropical Pacific. In parallel, I have studied the animals that live on dropstones, rocks that fall to the seafloor from melting icebergs in the Arctic. My two loves – Arctic biology and shipwreck ecology – have collided during the Heroic Age expedition, and I could not be more pleased. Terra Nova, located near the Greenland coast, and Quest, offshore of Newfoundland and Labrador, rank among my favorite shipwrecks I have studied. These two ships have long, unique histories, having been captained by famed polar explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, respectively. They are also teeming with life.
Quest was the first shipwreck we visited during the expedition. Soft corals draped from the bow like streamers at a birthday party. Pastel orange and pink, the soft corals stood in sharp contrast to the dull brown of the wood beneath. Bright pink anemones dotted the hull, adding another beautiful colour to the scene. On Quest, the anemones had an interesting distribution pattern. They lived primarily on the upper portion of the ship’s hull, where the oak planking had fallen off or been eaten away. This degradation opened a complex habitat, with plenty of spots for the anemones to wriggle into. Among the ship’s ribs, they could shelter from predators. Lower down on Quest’s hull, greenheart wood, once used to protect the ship from ice damage, remained intact 60 years after sinking. No anemones lived on the greenheart. The surface was too smooth – anemones had nowhere to hide.
Revelations like the anemone distribution on Quest help us understand how anthropogenic structures impact biodiversity. Centuries of human seafaring have deposited countless shipwrecks on the seafloor. Now, as humans expand our offshore presence through “ocean sprawl,” modern structures have the potential for further ecological impacts. By studying our past, we can better understand and predict our future. Quest shows a clear message: complex structures support higher biodiversity than smooth surfaces.
Terra Nova came to rest further north than Quest by about 10 degrees of latitude, but the two shipwrecks host surprisingly similar communities. The Labrador Current, which brings cold Arctic water southward along the Canadian coast, serves as an oceanographic unifier in the region. As our team laid eyes on Terra Nova, I noticed the same pink anemones. Cod swam around both shipwrecks, although they were at much higher density near Quest. Sister species of redfish sheltered among the planks of both ships. There was one key difference: in place of the soft corals on Quest, Terra Nova hosted sponges.
The sponges were coloured in shades of white and yellow. Multiple different species clung to the wreck, differentiated by their shapes. One species was bulbous, with dozens of short tubes covering its surface. Another species was flat and encrusting, almost like yellow paint on Terra Nova’s wood. My favorite sponge was reminiscent of a flower – a white stem with a flowing, convoluted uni-petal. Imagery collected with a robotic vehicle and the submersible Alvin have shown the beauty of Terra Nova’s biological community and the comparatively sparsely-inhabited surrounding seafloor.
The muddy floor of the Labrador Sea is punctuated by glacial dropstones, the rocky counterpart to Quest’s and Terra Nova’s wooden structures. The dropstones are smaller than the ships, and that fact alone has implications for who lives where. Anemones dot the surfaces of stones near both shipwrecks, but the species that are most distinctive – the sponges on Terra Nova and the soft corals on Quest – are absent from the stones. They occur on the shipwrecks only.
Soft corals and sponges have similar life strategies. They sit in one place, attached to their habitat, and filter the water for food. As water flows past these sessile species, it brings microscopic animals and organic particles to the waiting, stationary mouths. Soft corals and sponges are entirely dependent on the current to bring their food to them. Much like real estate, the livelihood of a filter feeder depends on location, location, location. High up on the bow of a shipwreck, plenty of water flows past the sponges and soft corals, bringing an abundant food supply that helps them grow. Lower down on the seafloor, on a small dropstone, there is less water flow and less to eat. The soft corals and sponges can’t make a living there.
I have seen the same patterns again and again on shipwrecks across the world. Tall vertical structures like ship’s bows are prime real estate, home to diverse and abundant communities. This provides another lesson for ocean sprawl: taller is better. As humans expand our energy infrastructure further offshore, we can use these lessons from shipwrecks to design nature-positive structures.
Shipwrecks are ubiquitous in the ocean and integral parts of our marine ecosystem. They serve as underwater museums and memorials to those who lived aboard. They also serve as habitats. They increase biodiversity. They support fisheries. And to me, they are incredibly beautiful.
Canada, I have known you as a neighbour for my entire life, but now, I know you as a research partner. I am in awe of your waters, your history, your biodiversity. There is so much more to explore, if I just make the time to cross the border. Let’s keep discovering together.
— Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser
On every expedition, after the last Alvin dive, when the sub is safely stowed in its hangar and everyone has drifted off to dinner, I try to linger on the back deck of Atlantis for a singular moment. Up on the bridge, someone touches a button and the propellers spin up, turning the water behind the ship into a roiling wake that will follow us all the way to port.
It’s a bittersweet moment. The hard work of launch and recovery is done, and our expedition is now a hard drive full of images and data or a collection of links to posts like this that try to distill months of effort into coherent stories.
My job on the Heroic Age Expedition has been to help the media teams on board tell those stories. I’ve been on eight or 10 Alvin expeditions over my career at WHOI and made one dive in the sub. On those trips, I was the person with a camera trying to get just the right angle or wedged into a constantly heaving desk trying to get the day’s story back to shore. So it was strange to be primarily an enabler and observer, but it allowed me to witness the process of deep-sea exploration from the perspective of people experiencing it for the first time.
It also allowed me to renew my appreciation for the professionalism that has made Alvin the safest, most reliable human-occupied vehicle program in history and (shameless jingoism alert) the U.S. Academic Research Fleet, of which the Office of Naval Research’s R/V Atlantis is a part, the envy of ocean science worldwide.
The dives to Quest and Terra Nova didn’t approach Alvin’s maximum dive depth of 6,500 metres, but listening to the radio chatter preceding a dive or watching the Atlantis crew on deck, there was no sense that this was anything less than the most serious thing anyone could be doing. And the excitement of the people climbing out of the sub was just as palpable as from someone who had just seen their first hydrothermal vent.
So maybe I end up on the stern at the end of an expedition not so much to savor the start of the trip home as to marvel at how hard this group works to make their difficult job look so easy. And that over the horizon, the next adventure awaits.
— Ken Kostel, director of research communication, WHOI
Having completed three days of extremely productive ROV and submersible diving on the wreck site of Terra Nova, the RV Atlantis is now steaming back to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — a journey of some 1,950 nautical miles made longer as we skirt a developing storm in the Labrador Sea. The ship has taken on a relaxed atmosphere, allowing those on board to catch up on sleep, do laundry or enjoy lingering conversations over lunch. The days of intense and sometimes frenetic activity fade in the memory with each mile we gain away from the coast of Greenland.
The expedition has been an overwhelming success. We planned to be at sea for up to 21 days, with only six being operational, where we’d be diving directly over the wreck sites. This meant that each operational day would be especially precious in terms of how we used the limited time budgeted for the expedition and the associated costs. Fortunately, the weather gods were kind and only two Alvin dives were scrubbed for high winds and seas, and, unusually, for a pair of pesky icebergs that tracked right for the ship — a first in the history of Alvin diving.
The imagery and data we collected from the wrecks in such a relatively short period is staggering. It includes over one million high-resolution still photographs and hours of high-definition 5.3k cinematic video. A major question for me in the planning was whether we’d be able to get total coverage of both wrecks, documenting every surface of their exteriors and exposed interiors knowing that the key to understanding a badly damaged shipwreck would be to have a single coherent, photogrammetrically-accurate image as a final product. That question has been answered without reservation, and I can’t wait for the day the RCGS reveals what we have uncovered.
As co-chief scientist and architect of this expedition, responsible for choosing WHOI as our operational partner, the imaging equipment and the science team, I am proud it all worked out, and I’m proud of the way the team supported each other. The terabytes of images and video we are bringing home quantitively speaks to the success, and hopefully the legacy of the expedition for the RCGS. Equally important, however, is the experience we all had visiting and seeing these famous shipwrecks with our own eyes through the viewports of Alvin. That is an experience that is unmeasurable and which none of us will ever forget.
— David Mearns
Greetings from the RV Atlantis, where we have just concluded Day 10 of the Heroic Age Expedition to survey the shipwrecks of Quest and Terra Nova. My name is Kevin Chan and I’m a senior policy director at Meta Platforms. I have the honour of serving as the Mission Specialist (digital engagement) on the expedition. As we approach the coast of Greenland and our second shipwreck, I wanted to take a moment to outline how we are leveraging digital technologies to make the Heroic Age Expedition truly one for the digital age.
The purpose of the expedition is of course to undertake the first comprehensive visual survey of both Quest and Terra Nova, producing digital twins of the wrecks by documenting and mapping the shipwrecks and debris fields around their hulls. We are doing this by equipping the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Falcon remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with the imaging systems. We sent it down to a depth of about 390 metres for Quest, and will do the same for Terra Nova at 170 metres.
In doing so, we hope to not only capture the wrecks in the highest resolution possible for further scientific and archeological study, but also to democratize access to these historical artifacts by making them available to the public online and through virtual reality platforms.
Thanks to satellite technology, internet connectivity at sea is no longer as tricky as it once was, but daily bandwidth limits are still a thing. We are relying on dedicated WhatsApp chat threads to ensure reliable communications among the science team while consuming the minimum amount of data.
Of course, the journey is as important as the destination, and we are also leveraging digital tools to make sure Canadians and people around the world can follow along as we travel on the North Atlantic. We have created a dedicated Instagram account featuring backgrounders on the legendary Antarctic explorers Shackleton and Scott, the purpose of the expedition, life at sea aboard Atlantis, and hopefully some lighthearted fun.
Some members of the team are also equipped with Ray-ban and Oakley Meta AI glasses, and will be capturing first-person point-of-view (POV) images and video throughout the journey, including onboard WHOI’s famed submersible, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin.
Check out these shots I managed to take from inside the Alvin using my Meta Ray-bans — the first ever taken from inside the submersible with this tech!
Please continue to follow along and share our content with those who have an interest in exploration, scientific discovery and a love of the natural world!
— Kevin Chan
Day 10 at sea: We have seen dolphins, whales, icebergs and even a puffin, but the highlight by far has been setting eyes on Quest — the true inspiration for this expedition. She has brought together historians, scientists, marine biologists, marine archaeologists, award-winning photographers, a famed submersible and her team, and many others, all united by a shared passion for polar history and exploration.
It was surprisingly emotional to say goodbye to Quest after several days of diving and filming her, but we feel comforted by knowing she has enabled a unique marine ecosystem to thrive around her. As we now set our course for Terra Nova, our conversations naturally shift from Shackleton to Scott, and from one remarkable chapter of polar history to another.
As I reflect on the past days and weeks, I am mindful that there are moments when history feels less like something preserved in archives and more like something that can be experienced firsthand. As a mission specialist aboard the Heroic Age Expedition, I feel we are living one of those moments. Each day at sea I pause to consider the experiences of the Heroic Age explorers — Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen, Mawson, and their crews, whose determination transformed our understanding of the polar regions. While our expedition is equipped with sophisticated technology unimaginable to those early explorers, the sense of purpose remains remarkably familiar: ours, to expand knowledge while respecting the extraordinary history that lies beneath the Labrador Sea. For me, this voyage is far more than an opportunity to witness scientific research and marine biology. It is deeply personal.
My fascination with polar exploration began long before I stepped aboard Atlantis. It began with my father. In the 1940s, after the Second World War, he spent two years in South Georgia working as a whaler before joining the Hudson’s Bay Company, where his career took him throughout the Canadian Arctic. During one voyage, his ship was caught in a powerful storm off South Georgia. The conditions he experienced echoed those faced by Shackleton and his men on the James Caird as they battled their way from Elephant Island to South Georgia. While my father’s voyage was separated from theirs by decades and benefited from a working whaling vessel rather than a 22-foot lifeboat, the Southern Ocean was no less unforgiving. His stories of towering seas, relentless winds, and the respect such waters demand made the exploits of the Heroic Age explorers feel vividly real and instilled in me a lifelong curiosity about the North and South alike. Those experiences became the foundation of my own enduring interest in exploration and the remarkable individuals drawn to Earth’s most remote places.
Now, standing on deck watching for dolphins and whales, seeing the fog lift to reveal icebergs, observing preparations for an ROV dive or receiving training on emergency procedures within the submersible Alvin, I continue to think about the courageous men of that earlier era sailing towards the unknown. There is something profoundly moving about realizing that a lifelong passion can come full circle. My father’s journeys first opened the door to the polar world for me; this expedition has allowed me to step through it. Contributing, even in a small way, to the exploration and preservation of this remarkable chapter of history is both a privilege and a reminder that the most meaningful voyages are often those that connect generations as much as they connect places.
— Ann Mitchell
It’s been a busy couple of days for the Heroic Age Expedition team here at the Quest wreck site in the Labrador Sea. ROV operations with Falcon began in the wee hours of July 7, and we got our first good look at Quest. The first thing we noticed was the truly astounding number of Atlantic cod congregating around the wreck. The second was that unfortunately, much of the wreck is covered with discarded trawling nets and associated equipment. The presence of ghost gear is not unexpected in an area that was intensively fished up until a 2002 closure banned bottom trawling in this part of the Labrador Sea, but it does mean that we are not getting the beautiful, unobstructed view of Quest’s hull and superstructure that many on the team were hoping for. Still, the footage from the ROV’s cameras and the three-dimensional Voyis scan — which is nearing completion — tell a compelling story about what has happened to this storied ship in the 60 years since she sank.
During daylight hours, expedition members have had the opportunity to directly observe the wreck site in DSV Alvin. The purpose of the dives is to search the site and surrounding debris field for identifiable objects (a priority target, yet to be discovered, is the ship’s bell) and capture images of the incredible diversity of marine life that has colonized the wreck. WHOI biologist Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser has begun to build an inventory of the Quest ecosystem and how it compares to other wreck sites in waters further south. In addition to the cod, there are large numbers of redfish congregating close to the ship, and quite a few spotted wolffish — a threatened species in Canadian waters — hiding within its structures.
There are large clusters of anthothela grandiflora — pale yellow soft corals — on the bow, funnel and the upper part of the hull, probably feeding on the plankton carried on the stronger current above the seabed. Interestingly, Meyer-Kaiser found a report from Fisheries and Oceans Canada that used fisheries observations to document the distribution of soft corals across the Labrador shelf. A cluster of anthothela grandiflora was reported in the area of the Quest wreck site, suggesting that fishers may have unwittingly pinpointed the location of the wreck long before anyone knew it was there.
And of course, it’s been incredibly exciting for the team to experience diving in Alvin. Since its commissioning in 1964, the legendary submersible — which undergoes regular upgrades and sea trials — has carried some 10,000 scientific observers on more than 5,300 dives throughout the world’s oceans. Capable of reaching depths of 6,500 metres, it’s been used to study “black smoker” hydrothermal vents and famously surveyed the wreck of Titanic in 1986. Observers have come back from Quest remarking on the way the colour of the ocean changes as Alvin descends into the darkness, the density of the cod, the emotional impact of seeing the wreck suddenly appear in the viewports, and the way time disappears when you’re exploring the site.
Wind and wave conditions are too rough today to safely deploy Alvin, but ROV operations continue, with more mapping of the wreck and debris field to be done before we leave Quest later tomorrow for our next wreck site: Terra Nova.
— Alexandra Pope
Atlantis has arrived at the wreck site. ROV operations are expected to begin at 11 p.m. ET, with the first images of Quest arriving shortly after that. The goal of this first ROV dive will be to confirm the position of the wreck, assess the site for any hazards that the Alvin pilots should be aware of tomorrow, and, of course, positively identify the wreck as that of Quest!
As research director Antoine Normandin explains, Quest is a bit of a Ship of Theseus, having undergone multiple upgrades and retrofits over her 45-year lifespan. Part of his work over the past three days at sea has been to develop a list of the ship’s key features at the time of her sinking, including her prominent bow bearing her Norwegian registration, T24T.
RV Atlantis has passed through the Strait of Belle Isle and is expected to arrive at the Quest wreck site by midnight. While we continue our journey, expedition member Jan Chojecki, who is the grandson of John Quiller Rowett — the financier of Shackleton’s final expedition — has contributed a short history of the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition and its legacy.
1921 was a busy year for the London businessman John Quiller Rowett. Having made a considerable fortune, mainly through his position in the rum market, he was turning his mind to charitable and philanthropic causes. Construction started on what would become the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, today a leading research centre for nutritional science. He contributed frequently to hospitals and dental research, working men’s clubs and the like.
When in 1920 his Dulwich College schoolfriend, Ernest Shackleton, approached him to support an Arctic expedition, he agreed a cornerstone amount on the basis that the majority of the funds would come from the Canadian government. However, in May 1921, the Canadians declined and Rowett generously stepped in and agreed to finance the entire expedition – to be known as the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition. By this time, it was too late to mount an Arctic venture, so Shackleton decided to head south instead. The converted Norwegian sealer he had purchased, now named Quest, was finally ready for departure in September 1921. Addressing the world’s media, Shackleton said of the mission, “It will be my swan song.”
The ambitious plan was to survey uninhabited, rarely visited islands of the Atlantic, chart the coast of Antarctica’s Enderby Land, and go on to circumnavigate the entire continent, exploring bases for wireless networks, long-range weather forecasting stations, supply depots and the like, all of which would have big value for the economies of the southern hemisphere. This far-sighted aspiration no doubt appealed to Rowett’s intentions for making a worthwhile contribution with his money.
Dogged by mechanical difficulties with Quest from the start, the expedition’s route was changed as they diverted to Rio de Janeiro for major repairs, missing out the stop at Cape Town where key supplies, and even a seaplane, would have been loaded. By now well behind schedule, Shackleton headed directly to South Georgia, where he died from a massive heart attack on 5 January 1922.
Shackleton’s right-hand man and Antarctic veteran of four previous expeditions, Frank Wild, took command. The Quest carried on, visiting the Weddell Sea but not reaching Enderby Land. They returned to South Georgia in April 1922 to find that Shackleton’s remains had been buried in the cemetery of the Grytviken whaling station, instead of being returned to England for burial there. After visiting the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, Quest reached Cape Town in June 1922. At that point, Rowett recalled the expedition and they were back in London by September.
Despite the altered and curtailed itinerary, the expedition nonetheless did carry out a considerable volume of research. George Hubert Wilkins, acting as naturalist, and Canada’s George Vibert Douglas, the geologist, had gone ahead together to South Georgia while Quest was being repaired in Rio. They managed to spend several weeks studying on the island. The visit to the south Atlantic islands was also productive. A large collection of biological specimens made its way in various shipments back to the British Museum of Natural History. Its breadth of taxa and geography sets it apart from the collections of other polar expeditions and together these materials are still a key resource for Antarctic and ocean science.
And the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition launched the career of James Marr, the scout who – together with Norman Mooney – was selected to be Shackleton’s cabin boy. Marr went on to a distinguished career in polar exploration and science, writing seminal works on the natural history of krill, the key indicator species group. Marr also led Operation Tabarin, the British mission to establish the first permanent base on the Antarctic continent, from which is descended the British Antarctic Survey, the UK’s national polar research institute.
— Jan Chojecki
The RV Atlantis is sailing up the western coast of Newfoundland en route to the site of Quest, the first of two shipwrecks that will be surveyed over the next two weeks. The surveys will consist of a combination of direct observation in the human-occupied submersible Alvin, ultra-high-resolution underwater camera footage and 3D mapping, so much of the first three days at sea has been spent preparing and testing equipment, as well as adjusting to the daily rhythm of life on the ship.
The expedition team and Atlantis crew have enjoyed daily presentations and talks on topics including the 2024 search for Quest, Shackleton’s final ill-fated expedition and Alvin’s 2025 survey of the wreck of USS F-1, a First World War submarine that sank off the coast of San Diego during a training exercise. World Cup games are a focal point of life on board.
For the most part, conditions at sea have been fair and calm, making it possible to enjoy some time out on deck — looking for whales, watching dolphins play around the bow and even recreating photos from explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1913. Today we are passing through our first patch of rough weather, but some team members have been able to climb inside Alvin and get oriented with its key systems prior to the first dive, currently scheduled for Tuesday.
Antoine Normandin, research director for the expedition, says there are four main objectives to the survey. The first is to bring Quest fully to life, finishing the work that was started in 2024 with side-scan sonar.
“These ships are the closest thing to space shuttles that they had at the time,” he says. At the dawn of the 20th century, Antarctica was an undiscovered continent. To walk on ice and land that had never before been seen with human eyes was akin to walking on the moon. Ships like Quest and Terra Nova were a critical part of that endeavour, and their wrecks are time capsules.
“We’re going to be able to tell the history of Quest, not only from its Shackleton days but from its Arctic exploration days in the 1930s, as well as its seal hunting days in the 1950s and 60s, which are also important parts of Newfoundland and Canadian history,” says Normandin.
The second objective is simply to learn more about the dynamics of shipwrecks: what happens to ships as they sink and once they hit the bottom? Normandin has done extensive research on the various upgrades and retrofits done to both Quest and Terra Nova over the years so that the Alvin and ROV teams will be able to identify specific features and assess what was damaged when the ships were wrecked.
That feeds into objective number three, which is to survey the marine life that has colonized the wrecks. Every ship that hits the seafloor instantly becomes a new habitat, explains Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser, a benthic ecologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Meyer-Kaiser will be reviewing all the footage captured on the wrecks to identify what animals are using the wrecks and how.
Finally, preservation of the wrecks is at the heart of this work. The creation of a three-dimensional digital twin of each ship represents “the next frontier in wreck preservation,” says Normandin.
“It’s building a digital model that we can then share with researchers and essentially bring everyone to the wreck,” he explains. “Very few of us will be able to dive to the wreck of Quest physically, but I think a multitude of us would want to dive there on our computers, on our VR [headsets], and that’s an incredible experience that we’ll be able to provide to the world.”
— Alexandra Pope
Exploration
An international team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is heading to the North Atlantic to examine iconic ships of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration
Exploration
Inside the expedition that found famed explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famed last ship
Exploration
RCGS find of Quest featured at major Shackleton gathering in Dundee, Scotland
Exploration
An expedition led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society found the vessel intact and upright at a depth of 390 metres