The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.” – Joseph Conrad

 

 

For millennia, the open waters have beckoned to us, calling adventurous souls to their liberation—and, in many cases, to their doom. Traces of these explorers, heroes, and merchants can still be found in our oceans; divers among us can explore their sunken vessels, which have been essentially frozen in time.

 

The United Nations estimates that there are over three million shipwrecks on the ocean floors. Lost, destroyed, or deliberately sunk, these wrecks are of interest to divers, underwater archaeologists, and treasure hunters alike.

 

Known only as the “Russian Wreck”, the mysterious sunken ship was discovered in 1988 beneath eighty feet (24m) of water. Some say that this ship was the “Khanka,” a fishing trawler believed to have sunk in the area. But the presence of electronic equipment—including a communications mast, more than two hundred batteries, and directional-finding antennae—suggests that the ship was most likely used for surveillance or communications. The spy-ship rumours have their roots in the fact that the Soviets preferred to use commercial vessels such as fishing trawlers to gather covert intelligence in the 1950s, and many believe they had a surveillance facility nearby in Yemen’s Ras Karm Military Airbase in 1971.