Haunting photos of the Titanic wreckage lying 12,500ft down in the North Atlantic Ocean's depths, as the world continues to be gripped by the ill-fated liner.
Over the last six days, the infamous Titanic liner has once again hit headlines following the news that five people are believed to have died after a submersible they were traveling in "imploded" while on a voyage to the ship's resting site.
An underwater vessel, called Titan, intended to go on a 12,500-foot-deep expedition - operated by OceanGate - in the North Atlantic Ocean to explore the infamous wreckage.
However, just an hour and 45 minutes into the journey, the sub lost contact with its launch ship Polar Prince and failed to provide a signal to the Canadian research vessel.
The five confirmed names in the missing submersible were British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, founder and CEO of OceanGate Stockton Rush, and veteran French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Thanks to filmmakers, historians, researchers, and tourists, the Titanic disaster still plays a prominent role in pop culture - 111 years after its tragic demise.
Back in the fall of 1911, an enormous chunk of ice cleaved away from a glacier on the southwest of Greenland's vast ice sheet.
Over the following months, it gradually floated south, melting slowly as it was carried by the Atlantic ocean currents and the wind.
Then, on April 14, 1912, a 410ft iceberg - all that remained of the estimated 1,640ft chunk of ice that left a fjord in Greenland - collided with the passenger ship RMS Titanic as it made its maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York, USA.
In under three hours, the ship plunged and tragically took more than 1,500 passengers and crew to their deaths.
Let's see photographs of the wreck that now lies nearly 12,500ft beneath the waves at a site nearly 400 miles (640km) southeast of the Newfoundland coast...
Visits to the underwater site have been conducted in recent decades to retrieve artifacts, study the Titanic's gradual decay, and for a rare few to simply lay eyes on the infamous wreckage.
After decades of searching, the remainings of the shipwreck were successfully located by a joint French-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard in 1985.
The first underwater images were transmitted back to researchers and showed the ship's debris field sitting about 350 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.
The ill-fated ship has been decayed by bacteria, salt corrosion, and deep sea currents. According to Business Insider, experts believe it could deteriorate completely over the next few decades.
Speaking to TIME, expedition leader Victor Vescovo said: "The wreck has been down there 107 years in strong currents and seawater, so it is a matter of not if, but when, the sea will reclaim it in its entirety."
The ocean liner is being bombarded by various underwater threats including a bacteria called Halomonas titanicae, per the Smithsonian Institution. This type of bacteria - which was first discovered in 2010 by researcher Henrietta Mann - causes structures resembling corroded icicles to assemble and nibble away at the iron on the ship.
Speaking to TIME magazine, Mann explained: "If one level deteriorates at the top [of the wreck], it drops to the next one, which means it … impacts on the lower levels. Damage is done layer after layer,"
"Logic tells you [that] more structurally it is damaged, the more quickly it will deteriorate," Mann added.
The researcher told the outlet that she doesn't know exactly when the Titanic will disappear for good, but she estimated the remains had approximately 30 years left before the ship completely decayed.
A photo of the Titanic wreckage from 1996 reveals a bathtub in Captain Edward John Smit's cabin. However, this part of the wreck is now no longer visible.
The ship's starboard side was "the most shocking area of deterioration," Titanic historian Parks Stephenson said in a statement, as cited by Business Insider.
"Captain's bathtub is a favorite image among the Titanic enthusiasts, and that's now gone," Stephenson added. "That whole deck hole on that side is collapsing, taking with it the staterooms, and the deterioration is going to continue advancing."
In addition to this, leading Titanic researcher, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, made dozens of treks down to explore the wreckage before he tragically lost his life aboard another exploration on the Titan submersible that imploded.
In 2022, the 77-year-old spoke to Discover magazine about the ship's disintegration and said that it seemed to be getting worse each time he went down to see it. "Step by step, everything is collapsing," he told the publication.
Several researchers and Titanic enthusiasts have spoken about their life-altering mission to the sunken ship. Award-winning physicist Michael Guillen spoke to Sky News about his harrowing near-tragedy in 2000.
He told the publication that a "very high-speed underwater current" caught his vessel and collided with it "right into the blades of the propeller."
While his group was reportedly entangled within the blades for "the better part of an hour," the submersible's pilot tried to wriggle them free, while "huge pieces" of the Titanic rained down.
The chilling moment dawned on Guillen as he remembered thinking: "This is how it's going to end for you."
On June 22, First Coast Guard District commander Rear Adm. John Mauger announced at a press conference debris found in the search for the missing Titan was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber" of the OceanGate submersible.
"This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor," Mauger said. "The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel."
Shortly after, OceanGate shared a full statement - obtained by NBC News - which confirmed that the crew is presumed to be dead.
"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.
"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," OceanGate continued. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."
Our thoughts are with the family and friends impacted by both tragedies.
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