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3. Underwater Archaeology in Lebanon: Exploring Origins and Unveiling Discoveries

An overturned amphora. An anchor corroded by salt. A mosaic slowly fading under layers of sand. Sometimes, even ports or entire cities lie just a few meters below the surface. Off the coasts of Saida, Tyre and Byblos, it’s not marine life that draws divers in, but echoes of a sunken past. Each dive is an exploration. Each return to the surface brings either a discovery or a letdown. What lies beneath Lebanon’s Mediterranean waters could reshape entire chapters of ancient history and spark tensions that are anything but ancient.

At the crossroads of civilizations for thousands of years, Lebanon holds a largely unexplored underwater heritage. Behind the beauty of ancient wrecks lie pressing geopolitical stakes, alarming environmental concerns and a troubling lack of legal oversight. Safeguarding these submerged riches means charting a course through maritime law, disputed borders, oil ambitions and organized looting.

Key questions arise. Who lays claim to these finds? What are their worth? Does Lebanon have the means to protect them? And above all, is time running out before they vanish forever? Through a series of articles, This is Beirut plunges into the intricate depths of a heritage both rich in history and fraught with modern-day greed.

Along the way, we will meet those working to preserve this forgotten world despite institutional indifference, private agendas and threats lurking just beneath the surface.

Understanding the Mediterranean, Understanding Lebanon’s Submerged Past

A remnant of an ancient world, the Mediterranean is the last living vestige of the Tethys Sea – named after the Greek goddess of the sea – which once covered vast swaths of the Earth. Today, its seabed holds major geological and archaeological secrets, especially off the coast of Lebanon, where the remains of sunken ancient cities lie. But how did it come to be? Marcos Hado, a marine biology expert, explains in an interview with This is Beirut.

Roughly six million years ago, a major geological upheaval drastically transformed the Mediterranean basin. The Strait of Gibraltar, the only connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the inland sea, closed. Cut off from its only source of replenishment, the Mediterranean gradually evaporated under the sun’s heat. What remained was a vast, dry salt desert, a period scientists now refer to as the “Messinian salinity crisis,” which lasted several hundred thousand years. 

Then, around 5.3 million years ago, an earthquake or tectonic collapse suddenly reopened the passage at Gibraltar. The Atlantic Ocean rushed in with unprecedented force, flooding the empty basin in a matter of months, or at most a few years. This massive surge gave birth to the Mediterranean as we know it today.

Contrary to common belief, life in the Mediterranean as we know it dates back to only 5.3 million years. But the civilizations that settled along its shores turned it into the cradle of human history: trade, cultural exchange, navigation, wars, empires and, at times, disasters.

In Lebanon, as in Alexandria and across other parts of the Mediterranean coast, many ancient cities now lie underwater. “They were built too close to the shoreline, often on unstable ground,” says Marcos Hado. People lived there, unaware that one day, the sea might reclaim everything. Yet beneath the surface, traces remain: discreet, fragmented, often barely recognizable. And that is where the story of an archaeology that goes against the current begins.

Ancient Ruins Beneath the Coastline

Off the shores of Saida and Tyre, archaeologists have uncovered entire submerged ruins: roads, walls, columns and fragments of ancient ports. According to Marcos Hado, many of these structures lie in the nearshore zone, at depths ranging from 5 to 18 meters, and at distances of several hundred meters – sometimes up to a kilometer – from the current shoreline. These are areas too shallow for large sonar-equipped survey vessels, yet too complex to explore without human divers.

Two major factors likely explain their submersion: the region’s frequent seismic activity and a sudden rise in sea level, possibly caused by a massive landslide or a geological shift along the fault between Sicily and Malta. It was as if the sea surged upward in an instant, engulfing once-thriving cities almost overnight.

“Boat-mounted sonar systems often miss these sites because they look like simple rocky seabeds,” explains the expert. As a result, underwater archaeology in Lebanon still relies heavily on freediving or scuba diving and on the testimonies of fishermen, who remain the most reliable guides to this submerged history. In fact, it is thanks to them that many sites have been identified: amphorae, statues and ancient relics accidentally caught in nets serve as accidental markers of a forgotten world just beneath the surface.

Over time, these scattered finds led researchers to a far larger discovery: the submerged remnants of ancient coastal settlements now lost. What exactly are these structures? Where do they lie? What led to their disappearance? 

To be continued…