The RMS Titanic 1985 discovery expedition

The RMS Titanic was tragically lost after collision with an iceberg during the night of the 14th and sank on the 15th of April 1912. A French-American team discovered her on the 1st of September 1985 lying on the sea floor at a depth of 3800 m. The two years of preparation are briefly described and followed by the description of the search and survey expedition from July to September 1985. The subsea systems used for this expedition were the towed sonar SAR of IFREMER and the towed optical vehicles ARGO and ANGUS of WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution). For the first time, SAR and ARGO systems were used intensively in 1985. Since then, they have been largely used for scientific missions. New deep sea exploration tools have also been developed since 1985 which contribute to push the limits of the knowledge of the subsea environment