Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project

An Anglo-Bulgarian survey (2015 to 2018) led by the University of Southampton’s Maritime Archaeology Centre with Bulgarian partners that mapped the Black Sea shelf with ROVs and multibeam sonar. Below about 150 meters the Black Sea is anoxic, so timber, rope, and tool marks survive intact. The project recorded more than 60 wrecks spanning the Byzantine, Ottoman, and Roman periods, including a Greek merchant ship of about 400 BC found near 2,000 meters deep in 2018, reported as the oldest intact known shipwreck.