Divers with a specialized unit of the Carabinieri, Italy’s military police, have uncovered a 2,000-year-old shipwreck on the ocean floor off the northwest coast of Sicily. In a Facebook post on August 7, Alessandro Giuli, Italy’s culture minister, said that this is “one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries in recent years.”
According to the BBC, local fishermen alerted the Carabinieri to the shipwreck, which was full of hundreds of ancient Roman vessels called amphorae. The boat itself is nearly 70 feet long and 20 feet wide, and was discovered at a depth of 150 feet.
Italian spearfisherman and freediver Giacomo De Mola posted a video on Instagram on August 8 describing “without a doubt, the most incredible discovery of my life.” De Mola recounts that he and a friend, Igor Bisulli, were scanning the seabed off the coast of Mazara del Vallo with their StructureScan, which uses sonar technology to view underwater terrain in 3D. What he thought was a large rock turned out to be an ancient ship full of hundreds of pieces of well-preserved pottery. There are also two anchors and a lead pipe. “It is hard to describe the feeling of being among the first humans in nearly twenty centuries to see that place again,” De Mora wrote.
In a statement, the Carabinieri designated the location of the shipwreck as a “significant underwater archaeological site” and explained that the site will undergo detailed documentation and study overseen by the Superintendency of the Sea.
