Officials have released the first close-up images of the remains of Quest, the final ship of the legendary Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.
The images were taken at the ship’s location in the Labrador Sea, around 1,280 feet deep in the waters off of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and were released in July.
After 60 years, the vessel remains recognizable and in moderate condition, Dwight Coleman, co-chief scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), told Fox News Digital.
“You could tell it was a ship,” he said. “It had an obvious bow and stern, rudder and propeller.
“Even though it was sort of covered in fishing nets, you could still tell that some of that structure was preserved underneath the nets.”
In a statement from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), in partnership with WHOI, officials said the wreck “was populated with pink corals, and several species of fish including cod, red fish and wolf fish.”
The images show fishing nets draped across parts of the wreck, as well as parts of its metal superstructure and portholes that still remain intact.
Shackleton, one of history’s most celebrated Antarctic explorers, died on Quest in 1922 at age 47.
He suffered a heart attack while the ship was anchored in South Georgia, a remote island in the South Atlantic.
After his death, Quest was later sold to Norwegian owners.
It spent decades sailing in Arctic waters before being crushed by ice floes and sinking in the Labrador Sea in 1962.
John Geiger, CEO of the RCGS, described seeing Quest for the first time as “a moving experience.”
“To see Shackleton’s ship, and to think that Shackleton was standing on that deck a century ago… At first, there was a lot of darkness, but suddenly the bow emerges as you are going toward it. It’s incredible,” Geiger said in a press release.
The team used WHOI’s Falcon ROV to image the ship and create its digital twin, as well as DSV Alvin, the iconic submersible that first visited the Titanic wreck 40 years ago. The vessels were made available through the National Science Foundation.
Coleman of WHOI, who is based in Rhode Island, said a major part of his job was creating a digital twin of the shipwreck.
The ocean scientist said he was surprised to find the wreck covered in fishing nets and teeming with marine life.
“I wasn’t expecting all the fishing gear, the nets and all the fish,” he said. “I was honestly thinking it was a little bit deeper and in cold water, and that it would be pretty well-preserved and free of fishing gear because I didn’t think there was that much fishing up there.”
Added Coleman, “Boy, was I wrong. … It was a vibrant sort of marine life ecosystem around it.”
While much of the ship remains recognizable, Coleman said its wooden components are “rapidly deteriorating” after decades in the underwater environment.
“A lot of the wood was collapsing and degrading. The wooden deck was basically completely gone,” he said.
“The metal structures of the ship were still pretty well intact, although deteriorating.”
Coleman said researchers hope to preserve the wreck through detailed digital mapping rather than artifact recovery.
“We understand most of the components that we could find on it, so you’re not really learning anything about history by recovering the artifacts. … There really isn’t much need to,” he said.
Expeditions like this help researchers better understand both maritime history and the marine ecosystems around historic shipwrecks, he added.
“By studying them, we can bring recognition to history and oceanography,” Coleman said. “These shipwrecks are now artificial reefs that support diverse sorts of biological communities.”
He added, “We care about those communities. We want to understand how animals live in the deep ocean. So, by bringing this project to the public, the public can gain a deeper appreciation for history and for the ocean.”
The newly released images come not long after another Shackleton-linked discovery garnered international attention.
In October 2025, researchers challenged the long-held belief that Shackleton’s famed expedition ship Endurance sank solely because it was crushed by Antarctic ice. They argued instead that structural flaws in the vessel also contributed to its loss.
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