Look carefully. There’s a Ghost Fleet ship under there. Photo: Don Shomette/NOAA
Forty miles south of Washington, D.C., the remains of nearly 200 historic vessels lie at the bottom of a river. They’re littered throughout a stretch of the Potomac in the largest ship graveyard in North America. The Mallows Bay Ghost Fleet is a sight to see as it’s the final resting place for over a hundred steamships from the first world war with sunken vessels dating back to the American Revolution—but now, according to a group of fifth grade scientists, the ghost fleet is ghosting.
The area is incredibly important, both historically and ecologically. Thousands of species live among the wreckage, and in 2015, the site was officially designated a national marine sanctuary. According to new research, presented last week at the American Geophysical Union’s 2018 Annual Meeting, since the vessels were abandoned they’ve drifted nearly 20 miles.
Interestingly, the research wasn’t completed by the NOAA or any other recognized association. Instead, it was done by a fifth-grade class from an elementary school in the area. The class, according to Live Science, took a field trip to Mallows Bay in 2017, then looked into maps of the area from previous years. The students presented their findings at the American Geophysical Union’s meeting, where they reported that increasing storms, floods, and erosion are the driving forces causing the graveyard to drift.
The students told the attendees of the meeting that the movement of the ghost fleet will likely have serious impacts on the fragile ecosystem and recommended that officials use ROVs to document the fleet’s movement and gather more information.
