NOAA ROV Finds Washing Machines Instead of Shipwreck in Gulf of Mexico

In a 2017 expedition, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deployed an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in the Gulf of Mexico to investigate a sonar target believed to be a shipwreck. The sonar had detected a large structure surrounded by smaller objects at a depth of just under a mile. As the ROV approached, the crew realized the target was not a historic wreck but a pile of washing machines, likely from a shipping container lost at sea. The container itself was the large structure detected. The crew joked about the spin cycle not working, but the discovery highlighted the prevalence of lost shipping containers in the ocean. Thousands are lost annually due to storms and rough seas. The NOAA crew recorded cargo information, including serial numbers, revealing the washing machines were manufactured in 2002, indicating the container was lost around the turn of the millennium. The crew noted that such debris can take hundreds of years to degrade and serves as a reminder of human impact on deep-sea ecosystems. The footage was released by NOAA, and the story was reported by Science Alert and PetaPixel.