- If there’s anything to make you go, ‘What the f*** is that?’ it’s the ocean.
The ocean is a weird, scary place. Filled with bizarre, alien-like creatures, it’s no wonder strange things happen down there.
Although scientists love spoiling a good mystery, the oceans are giving them a challenge. They’re right there, yet we know so little about them — despite how vitally important they are for all our survival.
Here’s a collection of ocean mysteries no one’s been able to fully explain. At least yet.
1. The Purple Orb
Let’s kick things off innocently enough with the purple orb. In 2016, the crew of the ocean exploration vessel Nautilus spotted a strange purple… Thing.
It was a translucent purple ball, seemingly covered in irregular bumps. It almost seems to glow faintly on the video the Nautilus crew released.
The crew decided to unceremoniously vacuum the orb up for further research. It later unfolded into two lobes on the scientists’ desk.
They think it might be some kind of nudibranch we’ve never encountered before. It’s hard to say, considering the thing is now dead — and no one’s found another one.
2. Yonaguni Monument
The Yonaguni Monument is an undersea rock formation in the Pacific Ocean, sitting at a depth of 85 feet off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of Japan’s Ryukyu islands. Discovered in 1985, the monument consists of bizarrely geometrical, angled sandstone blocks.
Most of the scientific community believes that despite their seemingly man-made nature, the blocks are natural. But others have pointed out some oddities about them.
While nature can create very artificial-looking structures, having this many of them in one spot is strange. The blocks also form a weirdly city-like area with what seems like separate buildings.
One scientist, Masaaki Kimura, even suggests the stones contain man-made carvings and designs. Are they really natural, or could they possibly be the remains of a long-lost civilization?
Well, we don’t know.
3. Colossal Squid
We know the colossal squid is huge as hell and it lives in the sea. And that’s just about it.
Although humanity has known about the colossal squid since at least 1925 when the first preserved specimen was discovered, it mostly remains a total mystery. So far, we’ve only found four of these squid and they’ve all been dead.
What does the colossal squid eat? How does it reproduce, or where in the ocean does it exactly live? And just how big can it grow?
All excellent questions, to which we just don’t have answers.
4. Bermeja
In 1539, reliable (at least by the standards of the time) Spanish cartographers found the island of Bermeja. From then until the 20th century, Bermeja appeared on maps sitting off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula.
But in 1997, a survey didn’t find a trace of the island. Neither did another one in 2009.
Did Bermeja ever exist? Or was it simply an ancient mapping mistake that people repeated for centuries?
Now, it’s possible that Bermeja was once there, but has sunk into the sea due to rising sea levels, earthquakes, or volcanic activity. And there are people who claim the CIA blew the island up.
That sounds outlandish, but then again, you have to consider that if Bermeja was there, it could shake up the rights to oil drilling in the Caribbean…
5. Milky Sea
The Milky Sea is a strange phenomenon where a patch of the ocean, sometimes a very large one, begins to glow. It can emit so much light and be so big that the area can be seen from space.
This phenomenon is much like the colossal squid. We know it’s there and that it’s likely the result of bacterial activity, but that’s it.
Scientists initially thought that glowing dinoflagellates were behind the glow. Yet, the intensity of the light and its duration doesn’t really make sense if that was the case.
For the time being, even the most knowledgeable researchers can only speculate. Meanwhile, the ocean keeps glowing — for some reason.
6. The Baltic Sea Anomaly
In 2011, divers discovered an unprecedented, nearly 200-foot-wide disc in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. Not only that but there’s also a 300-yard track, looking almost like a road, that stretches away from the object.
The shape of the anomaly is pretty strange. You know what the Millennium Falcon looks like in Star Wars? It’s kind of like that.
Maybe it’s the Star Wars reference that has fueled people’s imaginations about what the anomaly is. A lot of folks believe it’s an ancient crashed alien ship.
Or it could be a piece of a sunken Nazi submarine from World War II. No one’s quite certain, because nobody has really gone to research it.
That’s because almost all electrical equipment seems to stop working within 200 yards of the thing. Spooky.
7. The Ocean Floor
Last, but not least, we have the biggest mystery of all — the ocean floor itself.
No, that’s not a cop-out. For example, did you know that so far, we’ve mapped maybe 5% of the ocean floor at an accuracy that matters?
Every year, researchers find new and bizarre phenomena that happen in the ocean, like underwater waterfalls and brinicles. Many of them have explanations, so they didn’t make this list.
But what else is down there? Can we ever discover all of it?
And more importantly, do we want to?
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