10.
Yorkshire’s Lost Atlantic There is a lost city somewhere off the coast
of England that archaeologists call Yorkshire’s Atlantis.
It's a fabled medieval town whose real name was Ravenser Odd.
But nobody knew where it was for over 650 years.
1500 years ago, give or take a few centuries, Ravenser Odd was a prosperous port town built
on a sandbank where the coast meets the river.
But a storm in 1362 caused water levels to rise and the flood swept people’s homes
away.
The survivors had no choice but to retreat inland.
Ever since, the foundations of the town have been hiding underwater.
And although we don't technically know where it is, we know it's down there somewhere.
Professor Daniel Parsons at the University of Hull has taken an almost obsessive interest
in the lost town and is currently trying to find it.
The professor believes the remnants of the town are sitting on the seabed, and they have
actually been seen several times at low tide by commercial lobster fishermen.
He raised enough money for a research project, but after searching an area of almost 25 acres
(10 hectares) they found no evidence of the lost city.
They will do a second survey in 2022, and the researchers hope that this time they’ll
discover the mystery of the sunken city.
They’re also hoping to prove a point about how quickly climate change can destroy a coastal
town.
Hope you don't live too close to the water!!
9.
Underwater Cannibals Scientists have discovered a shocking group
of underwater cannibals.
I'm not talking about mermaids that eat each other, or some weird tribe of aquatic humans
with a hunger for human flesh.
No, researchers discovered teeny-tiny sea creatures that have a predilection for eating
their own siblings to bolster their own survival.
The animals are baby sea stars.
And although they look innocent and harmless, they cannibalize each other no problem!
A pair of researchers discovered the behavior by accident while observing baby Forbes’
sea stars.
At first, they were trying to find out how these small sea creatures would react when
introduced to killer crabs in a lab.
But professor Jon Allen instead watched in disbelief as the baby sea stars began eating
one another.
Jon hadn’t even put the crabs in yet!
They had to scrap the whole experiment and study something new altogether.
It was pretty disturbing!
We can find these sea stars on the East Coast of the US, with adults growing to around 9
inches long (23 cm).
But baby stars are only about the size of a pinhead.
An adult female sea star can lay between 5 and 10 million eggs a year.
They undergo a process of metamorphosis in which they gradually transform from their
tiny selves into their adult selves, just like how caterpillars turn into butterflies.
But in order to store up enough energy to do this, the sea stars need a lot of food
and there is a lot of competition!!
If that food is not around, they'll settle for eating their brothers and sisters.
8.
The Terror In the year 1845, the great Sir John Franklin
led the most famous expedition in Arctic history.
Two ships sailed away from Britain, the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.
They were searching for a way through the Northwest Passage to link Europe with Asia.
During this time there was a race to see who could find a faster way to get to Asia to
be able to trade.
The first person to do this would have made a fortune!!
But Sir Franklin and his crew of 128 men would never make it.
The ships got stuck near King William Island, and every one of them met a tragic and often
painful death.
In the 1980s, expedition members in Canada found the mummified remains of some of the
crew frozen in the ice, as well as evidence they had died from cold and hunger, lead poisoning
from eating canned food, and cannibalism.
Some had gotten so hungry they were resorting to eating each other!
Then, many years later, in 2014, scientists finally found the wreckage of the HMS Erebus
in Arctic water near King William Island, exactly where everyone thought it would be.
Two years later, they discovered the HMS Terror not far away.
The boats are still sitting underwater, looking exactly the same as they did nearly 200 years
ago when they first got stuck.
The ships have yet to be salvaged.
Even though they've been inspected using remotely operated underwater vehicles, there’s no
way to bring these enormous vessels to the surface and get them to a museum.
The only thing they have recovered so far is the ship’s bell from the HMS Erebus.
The UK has conceded the rights to the shipwreck to Canada so it is up to them what they decide
to do in the future.
7.
Sunken Temple Thailand is currently experiencing one of
the worst droughts in its history.
The drought has been going on for about 10 years.
And while it's devastating for the people, it has led to a rather unexpected discovery.
A sunken Buddhist temple recently re-emerged from its watery prison, attracting local tourists
who decorate the temple’s broken statues with flowers and kneel to pray.
The temple, along with the surrounding village, were all lost underwater in 1999 when the
Thai government constructed a new dam.
It's called Wat Nong Bua Yai Temple, and it was once famous for its massive Buddha statue
over 13 feet tall (4m).
As of right now, the statue is missing its head.
But there are other pieces of the temple still standing, like its huge gateway arch, a gateway
to a riverbed and some old pieces of stone.
Before they flooded the temple, it was a meeting place for people from several surrounding
villages.
People would come just to hang out, take part in rituals, and celebrate during traditional
festivals.
Now 20 years later, the temple is coming back to life.
6.
Ice Age Carnivores In an underwater cave in Mexico, scientists
recently discovered fossils of animals that have been extinct for thousands of years.
One of these creatures is an ancient wolf-like coyote, something previously believed to have
only lived in South America.
Researchers also found the bones of short-faced bears, which was a surprise because everyone
thought they hadn’t gotten that far north during the Ice Age.
Scientists now believe these animals, and likely many other species just as ancient,
originated in North America, slowly migrated to South America through Panama, and then
migrated back up again just before they went extinct.
Researchers also found the complete skeleton of a man from 12,000 years ago!
They found it along with the skeletons of these extinct Ice Age carnivores, suggesting
they had lived during the same period.
Thousands of years before the Inca, the Maya, and the Olmec, primitive human beings were
living alongside gigantic wolves and fierce bears.
Judging by all their bones in the same cave, they were fighting over subterranean real
estate.
Scientists made the discovery in Quintana Roo, in an underwater cave called Hoyo Negro
which means black hole.
Other animals found inside this dark and watery hole in the ground include sabertooth cats
and enormous elephant-like beasts that once roamed Mexico but are now long extinct.
And now for number 5, but first wanted to give a big shout out to
dat whitechocolate and PeterMakeItHappen
Thanks so much for watching and supporting OE!
If you are new here be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already for more videos about
amazing discoveries!
5.
An Ancient Whaling Ship In the year 1836, a whaling ship encountered
a storm while moving through the Gulf of Mexico.
It was a huge brig, but it didn't stand a chance against the raging winds and massive
waves.
The mast broke, the ship sank, and it settled at the bottom of the ocean.
207 years later, researchers discovered the remains of this ship and scientists with the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were able to identify them.
NOAA reported that their ship, the Okeanos Explorer, used a remotely operated vehicle
to dive 6000 feet (1829m) beneath the surface of the ocean and inspect the mysterious wreckage.
They could identify the ship as a two-masted wooden brig used for hunting sperm whales
called Industry.
It was built in 1815 in Massachusetts.
Historical records show the crew was rescued and salvagers took the whale oil off the ship
before it completely sank.
There isn't much of the ship left to see.
There is an old anchor resting in the mud at the bottom of the ocean, some random pieces
of debris, with the rest of the ship long-since either decayed or was buried under sediment.
4.
Underwater Treasure of Caesarea Maritime archaeologists uncovered a bunch
of precious artifacts in an ancient harbor in Israel.
The divers were with the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Marine Archaeology Unit and
had been in the area doing a routine survey.
The area was once part of the harbor of Caesarea, an ancient port city established in the 4th
century BC.
King Herod chose it to be one of the most important ports in the kingdom.
It remained an important port city through the days of the Romans and into the Byzantine
era.
It was the last city in the Holy Land to fall to the Arabs during the Muslim conquest of
the 7th century.
After that, the city degraded until it left nothing but a small village.
The marine archaeologists first came across a broken metal anchor, and then the remains
of two ships.
At first they thought they were from the same time period, but that wasn’t the case.
One had wrecked in the 3rd century, the other in the 14th century.
That's about 1000 years apart, and each ship had spilled its own unique treasure into the
water.
Silver and bronze coins from the Roman period, bronze bells, an eagle figurine, statues of
dancers wearing masks, and even a precious gemstone carved with a lyre.
But by far the most impressive artifact is a gold ring with a green stone embedded in
it.
The stone depicts a young shepherd wrapped in a tunic and carrying a lamb on his shoulders.
Researchers believe the figure is supposed to depict Jesus.
It’s a one-of-kind artifact, unlike anything previously found anywhere else in the world!
3.
Ancient Sunken Castle At the bottom of a lake in Turkey, there lies
the ruin of a 3000-year-old Armenian castle.
It's an ancient fortification that was found at the bottom of Lake Van, the biggest lake
in all of Turkey.
An Iron Age civilization originally built the castle called the Kingdom of Van.
The lake is just as mysterious, likely created by the volcanic eruption of Mount Nemrut tens
of thousands of years before.
How in the world did the Iron Age civilization build a castle under the water?
Of course, there was no water in the crater 3000 years ago!
The current water level is now hundreds of feet higher than it used to be and is now
used as a reservoir.
Believe it or not, it took a team of researchers over 10 years to locate the castle.
Local legends and stories about the castle were passed down through the ages, describing
a great fortress at the bottom of the lake.
But nobody knew if the stories were true.
The research team discovered corals, underwater critters, and even a sunken Russian ship,
but never the castle.
Not for nearly a decade.
Now they've identified its walls, along with the outlying settlement and the houses of
the villagers who once lived in the castle’s shadow.
Pretty exciting stuff!
2.
Underwater Potato Garden Archaeologists in Canada have discovered an
underwater potato garden.
That might not exactly be news, if not for the fact that the garden is 3800 years old!
That makes it the oldest example of a garden anywhere in the Pacific Northwest.
The scientists discovered the remains of this mysterious garden east of Vancouver, hidden
beneath a natural wetland.
Researchers identified roughly 120 square feet (11sqm) of interlinked stone, creating
something like a layer of pavement.
They also discovered crude digging tools submerged in the marsh.
And finally, they found over 4000 wapato tubers, a type of edible plant very similar to the
potato.
The garden was most likely left behind by a First Nations people known as the Katzie.
They likely planted the garden when nature had flooded the land like it is today.
It was still a wetland, but there were dry spots for gardening.
All the moisture allowed them to grow what they refer to as swamp potatoes.
It's amazing because even though the tubers don't exactly look appetizing, they were probably
the major crop of the garden, a legitimate garden farmed by people over 3500 years before
Europeans ever arrived in America.
1.
Underwater Mystery Blob An underwater blob the size of an elephant
mystified divers off the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.
The divers, also underwater photographers, were taking pictures of the wildlife when,
from out of nowhere, the blob appeared before them.
It looked like a giant jellyfish, a transparent sphere floating 72 feet (22m) beneath the
surface of the water.
Amazingly, the blob sparkled as if it was covered in glitter, and yet the divers could
shine their flashlights directly through its outer membrane.
The underwater photographers were no strangers to weird marine life.
And yet they did not know what this gigantic blob was doing, floating so close to them.
All they could do was take pictures, try not to touch it, and figure it out later.
Turns out the enormous blob wasn't a creature at all, but a mass of squid eggs!
This is according to Michael Vecchione, director of the NOAA National Systematics Laboratory.
He's also a curator of cephalopods at the Natural Museum of Natural History so he knows
what he's talking about!
Michael says the divers are lucky that they got so close to an egg mass.
Normally, we can only find them in open water far from the coast.
These giant blobs contain tens of thousands of eggs, all suspended in a jelly mass.
As that mass mixes with seawater, it gets bigger and bigger until the baby squids finally
emerge from their eggs.
Thanks for watching!
What’s your favorite underwater mystery?
Let me know in the comments and be sure to hit subscribe if you haven’t already!
See you next time!