Conservationists Fear Climate Change and Increased Shipping Threaten Shackleton's Endurance Wreck

The harsh temperatures, treacherous currents and shifting pack ice of the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, which crushed and sank his ship, Endurance, in 1915, led Ernest Shackleton to describe it as the “worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.

For more than a century, the inhospitable conditions, which present a challenge even for modern icebreaker ships, helped to protect the lost wreck, which was discovered in 2022, its structure still largely intact.

But now conservationists fear that the rapidly changing climate, and the potential for exploration vessels to access the ship one day, may pose a threat to the world-famous wreck.

Marine biologists have already discovered what they think could be a new species of wood-eating crustacean living on the wreck; in Antarctica, unlike warmer oceans, no timber-eating creatures have so far been recorded, which is part of the reason the ship has remained intact for so long.

To safeguard it for future generations, the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) has proposed that the ship and the surrounding sea become the region’s first specially protected underwater area.

“This is about foresight,” says Camilla Nichol, chief executive of the UKAHT, which was commissioned by the British government to lead on managing the site.

“What’s going to happen in the next, 10, 20, 30 years? In the last 10 years there’s been much less cover [provided by] seasonal ice and we know there’s more shipping.”

At the same time, “shipwrecks have always held a romantic appeal”, and “submarine activity is growing”, she says. “The Antarctic is the last frontier, which adds to its appeal and accessibility will only increase.”

Last month, at a meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, of countries that govern human activities in the Antarctic, the proposal for a protected area was passed without dissent. But a hurdle to the ship’s protection remains. The proposal needs to be agreed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which was set up to protect the region, and meets in September.

The CCAMLR is made up of 27 member states, including China and Russia, and has been mired in geopolitical stalemate over setting up marine protected areas. But based on past discussions over the past three years, the UKAHT is hopeful the proposal will be passed.

“South Korea, Japan, Norway, everyone around that table [last month], agreed that it matters,” says Nichol. “Culture, heritage, our stories matter to us and they matter to the rest of the world.”

Endurance lies on the seabed in the ocean’s “midnight zone” at 3,000 metres below the surface, a similar depth to the Titanic, which sank in 1912 and lies at 3,800 metres in the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Vessels travelling to the Antarctic already require a permit from a signatory of the Antarctic treaty to go within a 1.5km radius of the historic site. Making the zone where the Endurance lies an Antarctic specially protected area would prohibit entry unless rigorous conditions were satisfied.

“We would love to see what is inside the wreck, when technology permits,” says Nichol. The submersible expedition that found the lost ship was unable to enter it, but produced remarkable 3D images of its exterior.

There are also fears that as the climate warms, different species could begin to colonise the ship.

“The Antarctic is one of the few places in the world that a wreck could exist without damage to the wood,” says Dr Huw Griffiths, a marine biogeographer with the British Antarctic Survey. Nothing has been known to have adapted to eat wood in the Antarctic, so the ship’s timber looks as “good as the day it went down”.

Most animals colonising the wreck are “filter feeders”, such as sea anemones and sponges, which capture tiny particles of dead plants and animals known as “marine snow” that fall from the sunlit upper layers of the ocean to the deep seafloor, says Griffiths. But the images taken in 2022 also picked up a few fist-sized squat lobsters, from the genus Munidopsis, one species of which only eats wood.

“It is likely that this species is new to science, because it can withstand such low temperatures,” says Griffiths. “It could be a deep-sea species from elsewhere. Is it potentially something that will eat the wreck?”

The Endurance has become a natural laboratory, scientists say. Griffiths is keen to find out what will happen in a warmer world as the sea ice retreats further. He also wants to ensure that no invasive species, which could damage the reef, are carried to the region on other vessels.

“We can already see what happens over 100 years in a place where there is very little food. If we were to do some damage to the reef, it would take decades to recover.”