According to a new study, there are three million wrecks sitting on sea beds around the world, many of which are made from wood.
These human-made structures are having an important impact on the delicate environment at the bottom of the ocean.
Changes to the deep sea microbes that live at the bottom of the underwater food chain could have an effect on other marine life as well.
Microbial communities provide early and clear evidence of how humans change life in the ocean.
The two 19th century wreck sites in the Gulf Mexico were chosen by Hamdan and others. They put pine and oak blocks around the sites and left them there for four months.
The wooden blocks were taken to a lab for testing. Depending on the location of the wreck sites, the microbial diversity was different. Oak was more favorable to microbes than pine.
Natural hard habitats, trees that have fallen into rivers and the oceans, are already well known for their influence on the water they fall into. The study shows that abandoned ships have an effect on the sea life.
"These biofilms are what allow hard habitats to transform into islands of biodiversity," said Hamdan.
Water depth and the close proximity to the Mississippi River Delta were some of the factors that influenced the growth of the organisms.
While further research is needed to investigate the phenomenon at a broader range of sites, the initial findings show that shipwrecks are an important consideration.
Further research is justified as the team behind this study suggests that other human-made structures, such as oil rigs, could be having a similar impact on the deep sea.
While we are aware human impacts on the seabed are increasing through multiple economic uses, scientific discovery is not keeping pace with how this shapes the biology and chemistry of natural under sea landscapes
We hope this work will lead to research on how habitats are changing the deep sea.
It has been published in a journal.
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