The world ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, contains 97% of its water,
and is filled to the brim with mysteries.
Bright red tides, sound anomalies, bizarre creatures lurking in the ocean’s depths.
One of these enigmas stands out among the rest: are there indeed black holes in the
Atlantic Ocean?
So check out my list.
1.
Red Tide One day, you decide to enjoy a stroll along
the beach.
But once you come closer to the shore, you notice something shocking - the water has
a spine-chilling red color!
This unusual hue is caused by algae - microscopic marine plants - blooming or rapidly growing
in the ocean waters.
If you think that’s nothing serious, think twice.
During a red tide, a gallon of seawater can contain millions of algae, which is extremely
dangerous for birds, marine animals, and even us, people! Red algae can mess with breathing,
and eating fish and shellfish caught in the red tide can lead to bad food poisoning!
2.
Milky Sea Phenomenon On a dark night, you go on an ocean boat trip.
You’re admiring the stars above your head when suddenly something draws your attention.
You see that somewhere ahead, the ocean water is glowing with unearthly white light!
Don't panic - you’re a fortunate witness of the milky sea phenomenon.
The whole shining thing does look eerie but there’s nothing paranormal about it (even
if sometimes the glowing is so bright, and its area - so large that it’s visible from
space!).
This phenomenon mostly happens in the Indian Ocean’s waters.
Scientists haven't agreed yet about the source of the enigmatic glow.
The most popular idea, though, is that the ocean starts to gleam when countless glow-in-the-dark
bacteria gather in one place.
But what makes them arrange such massive get-togethers?
Still a mystery.
3.
Green Flashes Come to see sunset or sunrise near the ocean,
and if you’re lucky, you may notice beautiful green flashes over the horizon.
Why lucky?
Because usually, these flashes don't last longer than a couple of seconds, plus, this
phenomenon is quite rare on its own.
You’re more likely to see green flashes at sunset than at sunrise.
They appear when the atmosphere bends sunlight, passing through it, and separates it in different
colors, just like a prism splits the light into tiny rainbows.
Right at the moment when the sun is rising above the horizon or setting down, the green
light is the most visible.
But on very clear days, violet or blue rays can make it through the atmosphere, and you’ll
see even more unique blue flashes instead of the green ones.
4.
Steaming Sea Frost smoke, sea smoke, steam fog - this phenomenon
has many names.
On a cold day, you can see the ocean literally smoking!
It has nothing to do with fire though.
The water starts to steam when the wind carrying cold air bumps into the warm humid air over
the water surface.
The warm air cools down almost immediately.
The result is the very “sea smoke” which looks pretty much the same as the steam over
a boiling kettle or your breath on a freezing cold day.
Only on a way, way larger scale.
5.
Underwater Waterfalls When asked, most people will say that the
tallest waterfall in the world is Angel Falls in Venezuela.
Indeed, this waterfall is more than 3,000 ft high, which is way higher than the world’s
tallest building - Burj Khalifa!
But the world’s biggest waterfall is actually underwater c (however confusing it may sound).
The Denmark Strait Cataract - that’s the name of this mind-boggling phenomenon - lies
beneath the Denmark Strait that separates Greenland and Denmark.
There, the Nordic Sea’s frigid waters clash with much warmer Irminger Sea.
The temperature difference makes the cold water flow underneath the warmer, creating
a drop of 11,500 ft, which is just three times smaller than the Challenger Deep - the deepest
place on Earth!
The Denmark Strait Cataract also transports 50,000 times more water than Niagara Falls!
6.
The Bloop Sound For the first (and only) time, the Bloop was
recorded in 1997.
This minute-long, low-frequency sound was coming from the southern coast of Chile, and
it was so deafeningly loud that underwater microphones as far as 3,000 miles away could
hear it.
But the most spine-chilling thing about this noise is that no one has ever heard it again.
No wonder that people all over the world started to look for explanations: was it the call
of a megalodon, marine dino, giant squid, or some other undiscovered sea inhabitant?
The excitement escalated after scientists announced that the noise was 100% not human-made.
Sci-fi lovers were unfortunately left disappointed when the mystery was solved.
The enigmatic sound was created by a thunderous underwater icequake - the cracking of the
ice shelf breaking up from Antarctica.
7.
Black Holes in the Ocean You might not need to fly to space if you
want to take a closer look at a black hole!
Scientists have found something very similar to black holes in the southern Atlantic Ocean!
A black hole has such an enormous gravitational pull that once something gets pulled in, it
doesn't have any chance to escape.
Even light can’t get out of a black hole.
Ocean “black holes” seem to be as powerful as their space relatives.
But instead of catching the light, they do the same with water.
Ocean eddies are massive whirlpools that are spinning against the main current.
They usually swirl billions of tons of water, and most of them are larger than a city.
These whirlpools are so powerful that nothing trapped by them can escape.
But the scariest thing is that you might not even notice heading into one of them.
These things are so huge that you won't spot their boundaries until it’s too late!
Scientists, though, started to explore ocean vortices with the help of satellites.
That’s how they discovered the borders of several eddies.
After that, they managed to prove that mathematically, these whirlpools are the same as mysterious
black holes in space.
Massive eddies are surrounded by super-tight barriers where the fluid is moving in closed
loops.
Even water can’t get out from the inside of these loops.
That's why tight ocean vortices kinda play the role of ginormous containers: water inside
them can be totally different from the ocean surrounding an eddy!
And I’m not only talking about its temperature - the salt content inside and outside a whirlpool
often differs as well!
Black-hole-like ocean eddies are surprisingly stable.
That’s why they often serve as water taxis, transporting all kinds of microorganisms,
oil, and plastic waste from one part of the ocean to another.
8.
Brinicles Remember icicles hanging from your house’s
roof gutter on a sunny winter day?
Now, imagine the same icicle but with length measuring not in inches but in feet and made
not from rainwater but from super-salty seawater called brine.
I’ve just described a brinicle - one of the most astounding phenomena happening in
the bitterly cold waters of the Arctic and Antarctica.
When surface seawater freezes and forms ice, it exudes salt.
This makes some of the nearby water much saltier than before.
And the saltier the water, the lower its freezing point is.
The result is pockets of ocean brine trapped in ice packs.
Once this ice cracks, you can observe something bizarre and amazing: the brine starts to leak
out.
It’s saltier and denser than the surrounding water, that’s why it starts to sink toward
the bottom.
Along the way, the super-cold brine comes into contact with not-so-cold water and freezes
it.
That’s when you can see an ice tube forming around the sinking brine!
Congrats, you’re witnessing the appearance of a brinicle - or ice stalactite.
It usually takes a brinicle four to twelve hours to reach the ocean floor.
9.
Underwater Crop Circles For the first time, underwater crop circles
were spotted in 1995 close to Japan’s southern coast.
Local divers called these 7-ft-wide artfully patterned structures “mystery circles.”
The enigma had been plaguing many minds for almost 16 years until the culprit was finally
caught.
Imagine the researchers’ surprise when it turned out to be a male pufferfish!
The fish needs a bit more than a week to build one circle, and the aesthetics are obviously
crucial!
A male is swimming inside the circle digging valleys in the sand with its fins.
But that’s not all: the fish also use shells and corals to decorate particular parts of
their circles!
But the whole “build-a-circle” thing has a practical purpose as well.
The way a male fish swims pushes the sand toward the center of the circle and creates
a mound which later serves as a nest.
Ah, he’s getting ready to be a daddy.
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