INTRODUCTION
The Earth’s seas and oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface. We are talking about a global area of 361 million km² and a water volume of about 1.3 billion km³ and we have only mapped 5%.
MYSTERIES AND SECRETS
Sailors’ legends tell of monstrous waves that appeared without warning and rose like perfectly vertical walls of water more than 25 meters high without any climatological or geological phenomenon to explain it. In January 1995, on the Draupner Station oil platform in the North Sea off Norway, a 26-meter wave was recorded impacting the station. A monster wave like the one in legends. This evidence prompted an unprecedented investigation that culminated in the assertion that, indeed, such walls of water, although incredibly rare, could form in the open ocean. Many unexplained disappearances could be due to these ocean monsters.
The Kraken is a colossal sea creature that is part of Scandinavian mythology and is described as a giant squid capable of sinking any vessel. And although we thought they were mere legends, since 1925, when we discovered the existence of colossal squids, the myth became something closer to reality. Giant squids do exist and, living at a depth of about 2,200 meters in the Antarctic Ocean, they can reach up to 15 meters in length, making them the largest invertebrate known. Yet only six specimens of the species, named Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, have been discovered. It is believed that there could be much larger specimens and even more colossal species that we have not yet discovered.
The Devil’s Sea or Dragon Triangle is a region of the Pacific Ocean around Miyake Island, about 100 kilometers south of Tokyo, Japan. Popular culture places this sea as, along with the Bermuda Triangle, one of the areas of the world where most aircraft and ship disappearances take place. There has been talk of the disappearance of 5 military ships along with their crew of more than 700 people and a disappearance of a research vessel with more than 100 scientists on board. But it is not clear if it really happened in this region.
The Baltic Sea anomaly. Year 2011. The Swedish diving team OceanX is on an expedition in the Gulf of Bothnia, located between western Finland and eastern Sweden, being the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. Suddenly they came across something very strange. A 60 meter diameter structure with an unnatural design in an area where, surprisingly, they were recording electrical interference. A construction that looks a lot like the Millennium Falcon.
April 15, 2007. The Kaz II, a 9.8-meter catamaran, leaves the harbor of Airlie Beach, a small Australian town, with a crew of three: Derek Batten, Peter Tunstead and James Tunstead, three relatively inexperienced sailors. What was to be a trip to tour the coast of Australia turned into one of the strangest disappearances in recent history. On April 20, the Kaz II was discovered drifting some 163 kilometers off the coast with the engine running, a laptop on, the table set with food, but no sign of the crew. The three men were not on the boat.
Yonaguni Island is a small island in Japan with a population of just over 1,600. In 1985, the Japanese diver Kihachirō Aratake, discovered in its waters, by chance, a set of structures that, to this day, remain the subject of controversy. It appears to be a megalith, a prehistoric shelter of an ancient civilization of stone blocks carved by humans, although it is not ruled out that it is a natural formation modified by humans.
May 2019. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is conducting some underwater drone tests in the Gulf of Mexico, the ocean basin contained between the coastlines of Mexico, the United States and Cuba. Suddenly, the sonar found a strange shipwreck. A mysterious vessel built some 200 years ago, of which we know very little beyond the fact that it was on fire at the time of the wreck and that, among the wood, there is a number: 2109.
The Bermuda Triangle is a geographical area located in the Atlantic Ocean, between the city of Miami, the Bermuda Islands and Puerto Rico, the three vertices of the equilateral triangle that describes it and has an extension of 1.5 million square kilometers. Since 1945, when a group of 5 U.S. Army planes disappeared in this region, this area has been talked about as a place where strange disappearances of planes and ships took place.
The megalodon is an extinct species of shark that lived between 2 and 2.6 million years ago with the scientific name Otodus megalodon. It is considered one of the most immense and powerful predators in history, since its maximum length estimates, based on the remains of teeth found (up to 17 centimeters long), are 18 meters. And a weight of 59 tons.
The largest waterfall in the world is in the Atlantic. It has a height of three kilometers, being three times higher than the largest waterfall on land. Both waterfalls and other types of water bodies are caused by the difference in density between cold and warm water; cold water is denser, so it flows below warm water, which generates flow. Another justification for water movements is the concentration of salt in the water.
Another mysterious phenomenon is life-creating hydrothermal vents. Volcanic activity in the ocean is known to be quite active. Submarine volcanoes are abundant, generating major eruptions from time to time. However, another form of energy release is fumaroles. The equivalent on land would be geysers; they expel mineralized water at very high temperatures. The surprise is that in the surrounding areas, there is abundant life. The amount of bacteria and cellular life forms around the fumaroles is particularly important; they rely on the toxic minerals, high temperature and high pressures to live. Some suggest that the vents are related to the origin of life on the planet.