Top 10 Unsolved Deep Ocean Mysteries

WatchMojo

These ocean mysteries continue to baffle the scientific community. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at the biggest and strangest ocean mysteries that are still unexplained.

Transcript

00:00 It is this alien creature that's got eight arms and two slashing tentacles.

00:06 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the biggest and strangest ocean mysteries

00:11 that are still unexplained.

00:12 We're in the Bermuda Triangle.

00:15 Yes, you are presently in the Bermuda Triangle.

00:19 Number 10.

00:20 The Mary Celeste.

00:21 In 1872, the merchant ship Mary Celeste was found adrift near the Azores Islands.

00:28 It was in good condition, with plenty of supplies and cargo, but the entire crew had disappeared.

00:33 The sole lifeboat was gone, suggesting that the crew had abandoned ship on purpose.

00:38 There are myriad theories, but modern investigators have doubted most of them.

00:43 There was no reason for a mutiny, and no evidence of an attack.

00:47 Some now believe that faulty instruments on the ship led the crew to believe both that

00:51 they were near dry land and that the ship could be sinking.

00:55 Neither of which may have been true.

00:57 Since none of the crew ever turned up, we'll likely never know the full story.

01:02 Number 9.

01:03 The 1968 Submarines.

01:05 In the first half of 1968, four submarines mysteriously went missing.

01:10 They were the Israeli submarine Dakar, the French sub Minerv, the Soviet sub K-129, and

01:17 finally in May, the USS Scorpion.

01:20 The wreck is located some 2,370 metres underwater and 45 kilometres off the coast of Toulon.

01:28 We now know the locations of all four submarines, with the Minerv discovered in 2019.

01:33 It's deeply unlikely that the disappearances are connected, but four powerful submarines

01:38 all vanishing in the space of six months is confounding.

01:42 The Minerv vanished in 1968 with 52 sailors on board.

01:47 It's still not known for sure why any of the submarines sank either.

01:51 There was even a top secret CIA operation to recover the wreckage of K-129 without the

01:55 USSR knowing, though the government claims that this was largely unsuccessful.

02:00 I feel the peace.

02:01 Can you imagine?

02:02 I've been living my life waiting to know where my husband is, where the father of my

02:05 children is.

02:06 Number 8.

02:07 The White Shark Cafe.

02:09 We found that the sharks don't just live here at the coast.

02:13 They travel vast distances across the Pacific.

02:16 These fearsome predators usually live in coastal regions, which is how contact with humans

02:21 has earned them their reputation for danger.

02:23 We started thinking about how could we learn more about this mysterious place.

02:29 But great white sharks regularly travel far away from the coasts to a so-called ocean

02:35 void in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and for decades, scientists had no idea why.

02:41 Every year they go out there.

02:42 They stay there for two, three months, and then they come back.

02:45 Research from 2018 suggests that the sharks are going there to regularly feed on small

02:50 organisms, which you'd think would be the end of the story.

02:54 However, there's another layer.

02:56 It's really only the male sharks that actively dive for food in the cafe, and researchers

03:02 still don't know why the females don't join in, nor do they know why the males only

03:07 dive like this here.

03:08 It's this crazy behavior that I've never seen anywhere else the white sharks go.

03:13 Number 7.

03:14 The Mariana Trench.

03:16 Almost 36,000 feet below sea level, in the heart of the Mariana Trench, you'll find

03:21 Challenger Deep, the deepest known part of the ocean.

03:24 But we still have a lot to learn about Challenger Deep and the Mariana Trench.

03:28 You'll often hear it said that we know more about outer space than we do about the deep

03:32 ocean, because only five percent of the ocean has been explored.

03:36 This isn't exactly true, and the statistic really means that only five percent of the

03:40 ocean has been mapped in great detail.

03:42 Though, in 2023 it was reported that this had risen to almost 25%.

03:47 Still, the deep sea is treacherous and immensely difficult to study, full of questions we don't

03:53 even know to ask yet.

03:56 Number 6.

03:57 The Milky Sea Phenomenon.

03:59 Witnessed by humans for years, it wasn't until 2005 that we caught tangible evidence

04:04 of this phenomenon on camera.

04:06 But milky seas happen all over the Earth, and scientists are still studying them in

04:11 depth to try and understand exactly what they are.

04:14 Essentially, seawater will sometimes start to glow vividly, and with the invention of

04:20 satellites, we've finally been able to photograph the milky seas.

04:23 It's believed that the glow is caused by bioluminescent bacteria dying near the surface.

04:29 But there's still so much we don't know, like what exactly triggers a milky sea to

04:33 occur, since so many bacteria need to die at the same time for it to happen.

04:39 Number 5.

04:40 The Giant Squid.

04:41 We've got something, you know, the size of a two to four story house in the deep ocean

04:48 that we've never seen.

04:50 That's crazy.

04:51 Like the milky sea, it wasn't until very recently that we captured living giant squid

04:55 on camera.

04:56 We've known they existed for centuries because of sailors' stories and dead squid washing

05:01 up on beaches.

05:02 But they remained extremely elusive, with the first images of a living squid being taken

05:06 in 2002.

05:07 The giant squid, she reasoned, would be attracted by the light because it would mean food was

05:13 nearby.

05:14 It worked.

05:15 They live at extreme depths and are very hard to find and observe even today.

05:20 And we don't know definitely how big they can actually grow.

05:23 The squid has been blamed for the myth of the kraken, too, though there's no conclusive

05:27 evidence that a giant squid specifically has attacked a human.

05:30 This is the shot I love, where it just comes in and it goes up over the jellyfish and then

05:35 spreads those arms wide and engulfs the camera system.

05:40 But we still have shockingly little information about these giant ocean dwellers.

05:45 Number four, the Yonaguni Monument.

05:48 Sometimes nicknamed Japan's Atlantis, the Yonaguni Monument has been baffling people

05:52 for years.

06:00 It was discovered in 1987 and has captured public interest ever since because it looks

06:05 like a man-made structure.

06:07 Some credible researchers, notably the geologist Masaaki Kimura, have said exactly that.

06:21 However other researchers have said that, though the monument looks strange, it's a

06:25 wholly natural piece of geology created by natural erosion.

06:30 They've also pointed out that if it is a city, it's exceptionally small - only 165

06:35 feet long.

06:42 But its distinct appearance makes it popular with divers and people who wonder if it might

06:47 be something more.

06:48 Number three, the Baltic Sea Anomaly.

06:51 This unusual object is popularly latched onto by people looking for evidence of aliens.

06:57 It appears in a sonar image published in 2011 and has been widely noted to look a lot like

07:02 the Millennium Falcon, or perhaps like Pac-Man depending on the angle.

07:06 It's one of the most famous examples of a USO, or Unidentified Submerged Object.

07:11 No scientists believe that the object is a crashed spacecraft, but what it really is

07:16 hasn't yet been definitively proven.

07:18 Popular theories from researchers are that it's a glacier deposit, meteorite, or volcanic

07:23 rock - but it could also be a group of fish that looks particularly unusual on sonar.

07:29 Number two, Bermeja.

07:31 Is it possible for an entire island to disappear?

07:35 According to some, yes, and that's what happened to this small island off the coast of Mexico.

07:41 Bermeja was drawn on maps of the region dating as far back as the Spanish Conquest, but in

07:46 the 21st century, renewed efforts to map the area in detail drew a blank.

07:51 It looked like Bermeja, an island taken to exist, had disappeared.

07:56 This is most likely a well-known example of the "Phantom Island" phenomenon, where

08:00 errors in early voyages create false islands on maps.

08:04 But there are those who believe that Bermeja was a real island that could've disappeared

08:09 if sea levels rose and submerged it… and that it's being covered up by the CIA.

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08:31 Number one, the Bermuda Triangle.

08:34 For decades, people have wondered why so many ships and planes seem to go missing in the

08:38 Bermuda Triangle, this region of the Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto

08:43 Rico.

08:44 Driving that mystery, stories like the Lost Squadron, five US Navy aircraft that vanished

08:49 over the Triangle in 1945.

08:52 Many of the vanishings, like those of Flight 19 and the USS Cyclops, have entered pop culture

08:58 as modern mysteries.

08:59 Researchers have pointed out that, statistically, the Bermuda Triangle isn't more dangerous

09:11 than other parts of the sea, and that many of the disappearances happened during storms.

09:17 Stories of those early wrecks fueled the mythology that followed.

09:21 However, it's true that lots of those wrecks haven't been found to this day, including

09:26 all of the planes in Flight 19 and the Cyclops, the latter of which remains the largest non-combat

09:32 loss of life the US Navy has ever seen.

09:35 Let us know in the comments which mystery you hope gets solved first!

09:41 Did you enjoy this video?

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09:48 Thanks for watching!

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