Empress of Ireland Side-Scan Sonar Imagery

On the Internet are fascinating side-scan sonar (SSS) photographs of the Empress of Ireland taken some years ago by the Canadian Navy Route Survey Office using a Klein 5000 SSS. The web site's URL for seeing these photos are at: 

http://www.northernatlanticdive.com/empress_sss.htm

It looks like the Empress is literally melting into the bottom of the St. Lawrence. What you are seeing is in fact the way she is lying on the sea floor. The upper decks have collapsed and have slid down the starboard side of the wreck exactly like the Klein SSS is showing. It is very difficult to get a view of the whole wreck because you would have to capture small glimpses of the wreck over multiple dives. Visibility is very bad and the lighting is extremely dark. These Klein sonar pieces are dated as the wreck has deteriorated much more than what is seen on these sonar pictures. The center portion of the ship where salvage was undertaken to remove the teak decking in the mid-1990's causing most of the long term damage. I would suspect that the removal of this teak has accelerated the demise of this shipwreck by about 75 years. Additionally, it has caused the stern to partially "cave-in" and its once pristine section where I once sat in a wrought-iron ship deck chair, paying my respects to over 800 still entombed in her wreckage, now totally gone. I will be leading a dive expedition out to the wreck site beginning next weekend with the purpose of capturing video and photographs of the ship's current state of decay.