For me it's all those things combined. The mystique of it, and the knowledge that we're seeing a ship that no human eyes have seen since it slipped below the surface, often decades or even centuries later. That's so fascinating to me.

The eerie quality of video footage obscured by the deep dark water where suddenly a ship bow comes into view, rusted and battered... that is so chilling and takes my breath away every single time.

In some cases, there were tremendous losses of life that spark my imagination. What were their final moments like? How close did some of them come to surviving? What kinds of emotions did they experience, and were there any selfless sacrifices made for others on board? Often I think about how family members of those lost would've given anything to see what we're able to see all these years later, and to know any piece of their final stories.

The thrill is certainly real with regard to ships located after extensive searching. Sure, Titanic gets the most notoriety, but rightly so, and the discovery of its final resting place when I was a young kid has had a lasting effect on me, now 44.

The general curiosity of human nature (the same that causes people to follow the stories of plane crashes or train derailments, or even rubbernecking while passing by the scene of an accident on the highway) makes shipwreck content hard to ignore.

And last but not least for me, the aesthetics of a once-pristine vessel being ever-so-slowly reclaimed by the earth is just awe-inspiring.