Humans have been sailing the oceans for thousands of years; indeed, ocean voyages are mentioned more than once in the Bible, and we were sailing long before the writers of that text put pen to paper. However, the sea has always been a cruel mistress, and will take down ships and sailors without a moment’s thought, as it has been doing for as long as we’ve been trying to conquer it. Shipwrecks have inspired songs, such as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” or movies, such as “Titanic.” What’s more, many shipwrecks are something akin to tourist attractions, with divers exploring those testaments to the sea’s superiority over technology. Other shipwrecks almost certainly carried gold and other valuables, and as BBC News reports, there’s an entire industry devoted to finding gold-laden shipwrecks and retrieving their cargo for profit.

But how many shipwrecks are there at the bottom of the ocean? There’s no telling for certain, of course, since not every shipwreck has been documented, nor has every square inch of the ocean floor been studied. But scientists have come up with a number, and it’s surprisingly high.

There are an estimated three million shipwrecks across the world

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