United States
A stretch of the North Carolina coast around Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks, known as the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic' for the more than 5,000 shipwrecks recorded there since 1526.
The region is centered on the treacherous Diamond Shoals off Cape Hatteras, where the collision of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current, combined with shifting sandbars, has wrecked ships for centuries. The broader region extends northward past Nags Head to Sandbridge Beach, and southward to Cape Lookout and Cape Fear. It includes the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, established in 1975 as the first U.S. national marine sanctuary, protecting the wreck of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor.