For the first time in 14 years, divers traveled to the Titanic's final resting place, where they found the storied ship is being devoured by metal-eating bacteria and battered by corrosion and deep sea currents.

A team of explorers made five dives to the wreck, which lies in two pieces at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in near-freezing water 370 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada, according Atlantic Productions, which is producing a documentary about the expedition. They found the hull starting to collapse and the officers' quarters, where the captain had his rooms, beginning to deteriorate.

"The most shocking area of deterioration was the starboard side of the officers' quarters, where the captain’s quarters were," Titanic historian Parks Stephenson said. "Captain’s bath tub is a favourite image among the Titanic enthusiasts, and that’s now gone. That whole deck hole on that side is collapsing taking with it the state rooms, and the deterioration is going to continue advancing.”

The Titanic collided with an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. The ship went under two hours and 40 minutes later; more than 1,500 people died.

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The team laid a wreath at the site and held a short ceremony in honor of those who lost their lives on the ship's maiden voyage.

The expedition was intended to capture footage and computer imagery to assess the Titanic's current condition, and "project its future," along with providing high quality visuals and 3D models of the 107-year-old wreckage. The first 4K visual images will allow the wreck to be seen in augmented and virtual reality.

“The future of the wreck is going to continue to deteriorate over time, it’s a natural process," expedition scientist Lori Johnson said. "These are natural types of bacteria, so the reason that the deterioration process ends up being quite a bit faster, is a group of bacteria, a community working symbiotically to eat, if you will, the iron and the sulphur.”

The bacteria, named Halomonas titanicae after the ship, was first collected in 1991 on iciclelike formations of rust but were not identified until 2010, the BBC reported. The microorganisms can survive at intense pressures in pitch-black water.

National Geographic will produce a documentary with the Titanic footage taken in early August.

Texas equity-firm owner, renowned explorer and founder of Caladan Oceanic, Victor Vescovo, owns a submersible, named the Limiting Factor, and has piloted it on both the Five Deeps Expedition and during the Titanic missions.

“It’s a big wreck; I wasn’t quite prepared for how large it was," Vescovo said in a statement. "It was extraordinary to see it all, and the most amazing moment came when I was going along the side of the Titanic and the bright lights of the submersible reflected off a portal and came right back, it was like the ship was winking at me. It was amazing."

While photos of the ship may look ghostly, oceanographer David Gallo said the deterioration doesn't look much different than when he co-lead a remotely operated expedition to the Titanic in 2010. Gallo stressed that it's too soon to tell how long the ship will take to decay and more research needs to be done.

"I don’t see what was seen as being 'shocking,'" Gallo said. "It's been over 100 years and the ship shows wear, but it certainly looks like it’s going to last another 100 years,"

Contributing: The Associated Press.

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