I want to ask a dumb question: if it was known that this area was high traffic, why are archaeologists only just now discovering these wrecks? Is it not obvious to search this area for wrecks given its history? The article hints that climate change is increasing urgency. Is the case here that we knew there should be wrecks here, but climate change made the search happen?

The orcas have been sinking boats for longer than we thought.

Fun facts, Gibraltar was named after Tariq ibn Ziyad, a famous muslim Berber commander of the Umayyad Caliphate that conquered most of the Spain and some part of French territories in the early 8th century CE [1].

Then after the conquest, came the exiled young Umayyad prince (escaping from by the later Abbasid Caliphate), who settled in Spain to create a long lasting around 800 years (that's more than European living in America now) muslim Spanish empire with its knowledge center in Toledo. This center contains many books translations and also many new books by muslim scholars. Famous books examples including Almagest Arabic translation that was copied and translated further into Latin, and studied by Copernicus and Galileo [2]. Of course they are other muslim astronomy books and ideas that Copernicus and Galileo studied and copied but never cited properly [3].

Another famous book is Muqaddimah by Ibnu-Rushd or Averroes that's widely considered as the very first work dealing with the social sciences of sociology, demography and cultural history [4].

This center was later captured in 11th century CE, and this event essentially started the Western Renaissance movement in Europe.

Legend has it, in order to motivate his troops, Tariq ordered to scuttle their entire ships armada, before advancing into Spain [5]. Perhaps some of the sinked ships are part of Tariq's original armada, but these ships were intentionally sinked not by accidents.

His act of bravery were copied and followed by later Spanish conquerers but as usual it's not been properly credited to Tariq's original efforts [6].

[1] Tariq ibn Ziyad:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariq_ibn_Ziyad

[2] Galileo's handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text (42 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47263938

[3] Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus [pdf]:

(https://www.tuba.gov.tr/files/yayinlar/bilim-ve-dusun/TUBA-9...)

[4] Muqaddimah of Ibnu Khaldin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah

[5] The Legend of Tariq ibn Ziyad and the Burning of Ships:

https://arabic-for-nerds.com/islam/conquest-andalus/

[6] Richard A. Luecke - Scuttle Your Ships before Advancing: And Other Lessons from History.

This is off topic, but is it legal for websites to ask me to either accept tracking or pay? I thought the GDPR made tracking truly optional.

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