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Dive into two of the strangest water mysteries on Earth. First, we explore the Black Sea - a place with layered waters that never mix, perfectly preserved ancient shipwrecks, underwater “rivers,” lost settlements, and theories about ancient tunnels and even a possible man-made past. Then we move to Lake Michigan, where scientists recently discovered mysterious holes on the lakebed, patterns no one can fully explain yet. Both places raise the same question: what else is hiding underwater that we still haven’t uncovered? Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
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For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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00:00Hey now, get ready to dive into the Sea of Mysteries, also known as the Black Sea.
00:07It is the largest inland body of water in the world, bigger than the entire state of California.
00:13It has dozens of lost ships and some secret underwater tunnels.
00:18And some people believe it's an ancient quarry that was mined out in six stages.
00:24The Black Sea has distinct vertical layers that don't mix, with higher and lower salinity.
00:30The salty water comes from the Mediterranean, and fresh water comes from rivers.
00:36Ten of the largest rivers in Europe flow into the Black Sea.
00:39It receives more fresh water from the rivers and rainfall than it loses from evaporation.
00:45The extra water flows through the Bosporus into the Marmara Sea.
00:50There are two flows going through the Straits.
00:52The upper flow leaves the Black Sea and takes surface water out of it.
00:56The bottom flow carries salt water from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea.
01:00That's why the upper layers of the Black Sea are less dense than its saltier lower layers.
01:06The oxygen that comes from the atmosphere and photosynthesis stays in the surface layers.
01:11Everything deeper than about 300 feet in the middle and up to 500 feet near the edge is not fit for life.
01:18Only certain bacteria can survive in these conditions.
01:22Although there's no air deep down in the Black Sea, the upper layer is home to around 750 species of photoplankton.
01:32Eggs and larvae, fish, and invertebrates chill in coastal regions.
01:35There are also 180 fish species in the Black Sea.
01:40And some of them are valuable, such as horse mackerel, spiny dogfish, and sprat.
01:46The water level in the Black Sea is always the same because there are no high or low tides.
01:51So the sea is always calm, quiet, and serene on the surface.
01:55But it has one surprise feature, an underwater river.
02:00It's a current of salty water flowing through the Bosphorus Strait and along the seabed.
02:05This amazing discovery was made by scientists from the University of Leeds and was announced in 2010.
02:11It's the first undersea river of its kind ever found.
02:14The river forms because salty water from the Mediterranean Sea spills through the Bosphorus Strait into the Black Sea,
02:22where the water is much less salty.
02:25The no-air zone of the sea is an ideal conservation chamber for what's hiding on its bottom.
02:32The Black Sea is like a treasure trove for shipwrecks, and we discovered it by accident.
02:37Some maritime archaeologists were studying sea levels to see how quickly the water levels rose after the last ice age.
02:45And they ran across over 40 previously unknown shipwrecks as a complete bonus.
02:51Researchers used two remotely operated vehicles to explore the seafloor and the wrecks.
02:57Thanks to it, we have a video and detailed 3D images of the ships
03:01that were stitched together from thousands of high-resolution photos.
03:04According to the New York Times, some of the standout discoveries among the 44 ships found
03:10include a medieval training vessel from the 13th or 14th century.
03:15Expedition members nicknamed another ship from the Ottoman Empire
03:19the Flower of the Black Sea for its beautiful petal carvings.
03:23The team also noticed unusual details on other ships,
03:27like coiled ropes, chisel marks, rudders, and other carvings.
03:30So far, they haven't announced any plans to excavate the shipwrecks.
03:35But the ships might be filled with historical treasures,
03:38like books, parchments, and documents.
03:40It's worth a try to rescue them.
03:43The most extraordinary discovery in the Black Sea
03:46is what archaeologists believe to be the world's oldest intact shipwreck.
03:51It has been lying undisturbed for over 2,400 years.
03:54This ancient Greek vessel, 75 feet long,
03:58was found with its mast, rudders, and rowing benches all still in place,
04:03over a mile beneath the surface.
04:06Researchers believe the ship was a trading vessel,
04:08like those depicted on ancient Greek pottery,
04:11such as the siren vase in the British Museum.
04:14This vase, or vase, dating from the same period,
04:18shows a vessel carrying Odysseus past the sirens.
04:20The team took a small piece for carbon dating,
04:23and the results confirmed it as the oldest intact shipwreck known to humankind.
04:29The fact that it's so elaborate and well-preserved
04:31deserves a standing ovation for shipbuilders of the ancient world.
04:35Without microbes, worms, or other creatures to eat away the wrecks,
04:39it's no wonder the ships are in almost perfect condition.
04:43If the Titanic had sunk in these waters,
04:46we would have found it in a much better state now,
04:48not being eaten by nasty underwater microorganisms.
04:54Now, there's an interesting theory called the Black Sea Deluge Hypothesis,
04:58which suggests a huge flood happened around 7,500 years ago.
05:03Two geologists in the 1990s suggested that at the end of the last ice age,
05:08when the Earth's climate was heating up,
05:11ice sheets were melting and sea levels were rising.
05:13The Black Sea was a much smaller freshwater lake.
05:17It was separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a natural dam at the Bosphorus Strait.
05:23As global sea levels rose, the Mediterranean overflowed into the Black Sea Basin.
05:29They suggest the sea level rose by 6 inches every day,
05:33flooded coastal settlements, and changed the environment for good.
05:36Samples from the Black Sea floor show a sudden shift from freshwater to marine species around that time,
05:43which means there was a rapid influx of saltwater.
05:47Underwater surveys have also found what looked like the old shorelines and human-made structures.
05:53So, people were living in areas now submerged by the Black Sea.
05:56Plus, the timing of this flood matches up with known patterns of human migration into Europe, Asia, and Africa.
06:04They also say this flood could be the terrible flood from the story of Noah's Ark.
06:10Critics of the Deluge theory say the evidence isn't as straightforward as it seems.
06:15Some think the transition from freshwater to saltwater in the Black Sea was more gradual than one sudden flood.
06:21They're also debating if people left the settlements before they went underwater or as a result.
06:29An old chronicle that's been around for about a century says there were two underground tunnels
06:34starting in what is now Romania and Bulgaria and stretching all the way under the Black Sea to Turkey.
06:41Back in the day, peasants used these tunnels to move their flocks of sheep to the Ottoman Empire
06:46and countries on the Asia Minor Peninsula.
06:48Who built these tunnels and why they run under the sea is a complete mystery.
06:54At some point, the entrances to these tunnels were sealed off for national security and were under tight guard.
07:01The security forces knew all about these massive tunnels and kept them off-limits.
07:06In the 1980s, a group of people working on the Danube-Black Sea Canal
07:10accidentally found another entrance to these mysterious tunnels.
07:14This one was in a cemetery in a town of Romania.
07:17Canal workers used it to regularly cross over into Bulgaria.
07:22One more cool thing about these two tunnels is that some people think they were built thousands of years ago.
07:28If you ever try to dig a tunnel under the sea, you'll know how tricky it is even now with all the tech we have.
07:34So if the tunnels are really that old, whoever built them was super advanced for their time.
07:40Now, there's an urban legend that says that the Black Sea has its own version of the Bermuda Triangle.
07:47Fishers describe some wild whirlpool that appears out of nowhere and drags entire flocks of bird ships and even small islands under the sea.
07:56And once, things got even wilder with a ship that vanished under weird conditions in 1944.
08:02It was during daylight, and some black fog with green flashing sparkles suddenly surrounded the vessel.
08:09No one has ever seen it since, and no one knows for sure if the story is true.
08:14But it sure adds a spooky touch to the mysteries of the Black Sea.
08:18Lake Michigan is one of the largest and most mysterious freshwater lakes in the United States.
08:27And now, deep inside it, scientists have stumbled upon something unexplainable.
08:32Vast, round craters scattered all across the lake's floor.
08:37It all started in 2022.
08:40A team of researchers wanted to map the lake's bottom and look for some shipwrecks.
08:44At first, they were sure it's going to be just some typical rocky terrain or sandy patches.
08:51But what they saw on their sonar screens stopped them cold.
08:55Strange, circular shapes that looked almost too perfect to be natural.
09:00They were hiding about 500 feet beneath the surface, in places where the water turns dark and impenetrable.
09:08Those guys are huge, ranging from 300 to 600 feet wide.
09:13They also plunged nearly 40 feet deep.
09:17And there are dozens of them, neatly arranged like some footprints.
09:21But the team had no idea what these things were.
09:25Then, in August 2024, the mystery only deepened.
09:30Using a remotely operated vehicle, they got a closer look at these formations.
09:35There were about 40 of them.
09:37No one had ever seen anything quite like this before in the Great Lakes.
09:41What could have created those craters?
09:45Could they be ancient?
09:46Perhaps remnants of some geological event lost to time?
09:50If that's the case, it's weird how long these holes have likely been sitting there, undisturbed.
09:57Theories started popping up.
09:59One possibility was that they could be sinkholes, or dolenes.
10:02Those are basically holes that suddenly appear in the ground when the surface layer collapses.
10:09The rock beneath the surface, often made of limestone, gets slowly dissolved by water over time, creating voids underground.
10:17When the surface of those voids can no longer hold its own weight, it caves in.
10:23And this forms a hole.
10:25Think of it like when you poke a straw through the lid of a drink.
10:30Sinkholes can be small dips or huge, spanning up to 2,000 feet.
10:35They can happen gradually or all at once.
10:37Sometimes they can swallow entire cars, or even buildings.
10:43And Lake Michigan sits on limestone bedrock.
10:46It erodes pretty easily when water flows through it.
10:49Sinkholes like these have already been found in Lake Huron, and they look kind of similar.
10:55But there are some plot holes, no pun intended, with this theory.
11:00For example, it's wild how they all would be so huge.
11:04It's also weird and pretty rare for sinkholes to occur in a lake bed.
11:10They also kind of resemble a straight pattern.
11:13They seem to extend generally southward, forming a loose line, which is pretty weird.
11:19If these are sinkholes, then they're definitely not playing the usual geological rules.
11:25Though it might be some new, unusual process at play beneath the lake's surface that we haven't discovered yet.
11:32There's another theory, though.
11:35Glaciers
11:35Glaciers are wild rivers of ice.
11:39They covered much of the earth during the last ice age, and they're incredibly powerful.
11:45While they might move slowly, sometimes only a few inches per day,
11:49they have such immense weight that they can reshape entire landscapes over thousands of years.
11:57Glaciers can grind and scoop the land beneath them.
12:00They're basically like colossal bulldozers.
12:03Their weight, combined with the slow but steady movement, grounds down everything beneath them.
12:09Rocks, soil, even bedrock.
12:12This can create deep gouges in the earth's surface, called glacial troughs.
12:19During the last ice age, there were lots of glaciers all over the northern U.S., including the Great Lakes region.
12:26If they moved across what is now Lake Michigan, they could have carved out these deep holes.
12:33Glaciers often move in a pretty straight path.
12:35As they move, they cause terrain to erode, but the resulting erosion varies based on terrain.
12:43Sometimes there are places where the bedrock is softer or fractured, and these places are more easily carved and crushed by the glacier.
12:50That could explain why some holes could be bigger and deeper than others.
12:55Harder bedrock is less affected.
12:58But usually this leads to rounded, crescent-shaped depressions, known as chatter marks.
13:04Those marks are more like grooves rather than circular, big craters, like those in Lake Michigan.
13:10Once the glaciers melted, the Great Lakes themselves formed.
13:14If the craters were formed by them, they may have filled with water, becoming part of the Michigan Lake.
13:22Though this theory is more like a speculation, so we need more evidence.
13:27But there's another layer to this mystery.
13:29The craters are not just curious geological formations.
13:33They actually may hold valuable clues about early life on Earth.
13:38Parts of Lake Michigan, especially dark ones, are relatively low in oxygen.
13:44It's like a lighter version of deep ocean environments that often have very little of this element.
13:51For example, hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean.
13:54Underwater openings in the Earth's crust with some hot, mineral-rich water that are often very low in oxygen.
14:01But some organisms love places like these.
14:05For example, opossum shrimp.
14:08Teeny-tiny shrimp-like creatures that love cold, deep waters.
14:11They get their name because they have a pouch to carry their young until they're ready to be on their own, like an opossum.
14:19Or deep-water sculpin fish.
14:21Small, bottom-dwelling fish that also enjoys cold lakes.
14:26They're well-adapted to living in dark waters and usually stay close to the lake bed.
14:31And weird organisms like invasive quagga mussels, which kind of look like shells.
14:36These are small freshwater mussels that have spread there to the Great Lakes.
14:42They attach themselves to hard surfaces and can cause problems for ecosystems by competing with native species for food and space.
14:50All these guys could be in Lake Michigan, and even more.
14:53There might be microbes or even bacteria that are specially adapted to these harsh conditions, just like it was in Lake Huron.
15:02There's only a handful of creatures that could survive deep within these craters.
15:09And studying them could give us insight into how life once flourished in Earth's ancient, oxygen-poor oceans.
15:16That's because it's in places similar to these, where some of the earliest life forms thrived.
15:23Early Earth had an atmosphere with little oxygen, although it was much more hot and ancient microbes adapted to this.
15:30The Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan, have always had a bit of a ghostly reputation.
15:37Like even this mission was organized to study the shipwrecks.
15:41There were about 6,000 of them in the Great Lakes.
15:44Many of these wrecks are still sitting on the lake beds, preserved by the cold, fresh waters.
15:50And shipwrecks aren't the only strange things tied to the Great Lakes.
15:54Over the years, there have been stories of unexplained disappearances.
15:59Boats and even planes have vanished without a trace.
16:03The lakes, often calm on the surface, can suddenly turn dangerous with unpredictable storms and massive waves, leading to these mysterious events.
16:12Not even mentioning all the creepy stuff people noticed there over the centuries, such as ghostly lights above water, or bizarre weather patterns, like eerie, sudden fogs that seem to appear out of nowhere.
16:27In 2007, they even discovered some prehistoric structure that looks like Stonehenge there.
16:33Well, it was way smaller, but still.
16:35It lay about 40 feet below the surface, in the heart of Grand Traverse Bay, and it's speculated to be about 9,000 years old, way older than Stonehenge.
16:46Looks like this is a print of those who lived in the area thousands of years ago.
16:51These massive stones are arranged in a careful, winding pattern stretching over a mile.
16:57They range in size from basketballs to compact cars.
17:00But one, in particular, stands out.
17:04A boulder 3 1⁄2 to 4 feet tall, 5 feet wide.
17:08It's etched with the image of a mastodon, a creature that roamed the Earth about 11,000 years ago, before it went extinct.
17:17It probably sank there during the end of the last Ice Age we mentioned.
17:21This period had reshaped the region.
17:23This place is underwater now, but back in the day, it was still dry land.
17:27So, the stones were probably created by people who lived there, though we're not sure why.
17:34Were they used as hunting blinds?
17:36Or was it some sort of an ancient calendar?
17:39Who knows?
17:41Only about 15% of the Great Lakes' floors have been explored.
17:45Now, scientists are gearing up for a deeper dive into this mystery, both literally and figuratively.
17:51They want to analyze the lakebeds surrounding the craters, hoping that maybe something in the environment around them might have caused them to appear.
18:02They have initiatives like Lakebed 2030.
18:05These missions should map the entire underwater landscape.
18:09This would help us learn tons of interesting stuff about Lake Michigan and our planet's past.
18:15Who knows what other secrets these dark waters hide?
18:18That's it for today.
18:22So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
18:27Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!
18:30Or, if you want more, just click on them in the Wingerm Digital Foundation.
18:33But if you like new runs, you can see what other secrets are available in the future.
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