Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Orange Shots.
Before the year 1995,
whenever vessels would get destroyed by freak/rogue waves,
no one would believe it.
Because, first of all, if a ship sank after being destroyed,
its crew wouldn't be able to survive to tell the tale.
So it wasn't entirely possible.
But when researchers discovered freak/rogue waves,
and presented their documentation on them,
no one would believe them either.
But it IS true,
many ships have succumbed to rogue/freak waves.
Most of them sank, with any form of evidence constantly refuted.
Rogue waves, or freak waves, are real.
You must be wondering what they are.
Rogue waves and freak waves are giant waves.
They are so huge, consider for instance,
Tsunami, how it ravaged India, Thailand, and many other countries,
that wave was 10 meters, 33 feet high.
But coming back to freak waves and rogue waves,
they can go as high as 50 meters,
i.e., 160-170 feet.
And the freak/rogue waves documented up until now
their heights have been recorded being from 20 meters up to 50 meters.
Freak/rogue waves are real, and they can really tear a ship apart.
Today, we will talk about freak waves and rogue waves.
We'll talk about the time people thought these didn't exist.
These used to be among the myths and legends told by sailors,
about sea serpents, etc.
Maybe rogue/freak waves were part of those myths too.
But later it was discovered that it wasn't true.
So, let's start.
The sailors described these waves as large ones.
They are very steep, unlike regular waves.
Their angles are very steep.
And these carry a giant force that strikes ships, damaging them.
All of these were facts, nonetheless, considered stories.
They were never taken seriously.
Any accidents that happened during that time
were merely blamed on design flaws, or human error.
Scientists and geologists never believed
that may be rogue waves could have caused all these accidents.
Maybe rogue waves could've caused damage to the ships.
They weren't ready to accept that.
Because from what they already knew during that time,
the phenomenon of rogue/freak waves was
completely put aside, ignored.
That all changed, however, on January 1st 1995.
In 1994, a new platform was established,
an oil and gas platform.
This platform was 100-130 km away from Norway.
It was called the Draupner platform, and it became very famous later on.
On January 1st 1995,
the platform detected a wave.
Since the platform was new, it had been integrated with new sensors,
those sensors could measure the heights of waves,
their strength, their length as well.
The Draupner platform sensors
recorded a wave
that, according to that time, shouldn't have been possible.
From crest to trough, the height was approx. 26 meters, i.e. 85 feet.
That's the size of a 6-7 story building.
The wave was recorded to be around that height
even though the sea condition wasn't so bad.
There was no stimulus for such a wave to for,
but the platform still recorded a wave.
You might be thinking something went wrong with the sensors.
But the sensors weren't the problem,
this wave hit the platform, even caused a bit of damage
Since the platform was new,
the wave didn't really hit the platform's main structures,
but it did cause a bit of damage.
Another important fact is that
this wave was higher than the ones around it.
The scientists then believed
that the maximum height to be achieved was a max. 20 meters.
No more than that.
That makes around 62-63 feet.
This 85-foot wave
made scientists then think
that it was a once-in-ten- thousand-year occurrence.
But this theory was about to fail with the discovery of this wave.
This wave, recorded by the Draupner platform,
was later named the Draupner Wave.
The first recorded incident of a rogue wave.
If we talk about rogue waves, they're just surface waves.
Their criteria are
that their height should at least be double the waves around them.
Their second quality is
their wave length isn't as big as their height.
It's quite small.
Usually, ships like ours
can ride waves easily,
because they have a crest and trough.
In the case of a rogue wave; it's a steep wave.
And due to this steepness, once it hits a ship
it causes a lot of damage.
Because the length of the wave isn't a lot
therefore ships can't ride such waves.
One more thing I'd like to tell you,
do not confuse rogue waves with tsunami waves.
Tsunami waves are usually caused by earthquakes in oceans.
Tsunami waves are quite small in height,
but since a large volume of water is being affected,
a lot of it is being displaced.
When these waves travel to land,
they get compressed.
At the same time, when the ocean floor rises,
these waves rise.
That's why they're able to penetrate through land
and cause damage onshore.
In the case of rogue waves, if they develop near a coast,
since the volume of water affected isn't a lot,
they don't cause a lot of damage to the coast.
But at sea, they're killer waves for ships.
There was a British ship in 1940 called the Queen Mary 2
a rogue wave hit Queen Mary 2 from the side while it was in the Atlantic Ocean.
The ship heeled 52 degrees to the side,
then it slowly recovered.
Actually a very scary thought, considering
Queen Mary 2's tonnage was double than that of the Titanic,
but since the vessel was large,
it managed to survive the rogue wave.
If that same rogue wave had hit a smaller ship,
the ship would've capsized.
But what if a rogue wave hits a ship from the front instead of the side?
Well, if it hits from the front, the chances of the ship capsizing are low,
but then there's another risk.
When a rogue wave hits a ship from the front,
the steepness of the rogue wave is bound to cause the ship's bow to rise,
the ship's back portion will be thrown off balance,
with no water or buoyancy,
and ships aren't usually built to carry such weight in the air.
This could mean that the ship could break into two.
The rogue wave that hit Queen Mary II was around 28 meters, or 90 feet high.
If you notice, its actually the size of a nine-story building.
And according to their captain's testimony,
it felt like they hit a giant wall of water.
The Ferry Bremen suffered a similar fate in 2001,
when a 35 meter, or 115-foot rogue wave hit it from the front.
The engines got knocked off, the bridge was destroyed.
The ship also kept floating uncontrollably for half an hour in the water
until they were finally able to regain their engine,
and the vessel was started again.
The biggest issue regarding rogue waves is that
there's a giant amount of energy in a rogue wave,
and when it collides with a ship,
it transfers all that energy to it.
Another thing I should tell you about ships is
ships are built to withstand a breaking pressure of approx.
15 metric tonnes per square meter.
If a 15 metric tonne force hits one square meter, the ship still won't break.
The problem with rogue waves is that they contain
the power they have can range anywhere from 40
to 500 metric tonnes per square meter.
A ship isn't built to withstand such a force.
Another noteworthy fact is that rogue waves have three types.
One's a single wave,
which is formed on the surface
and can hit a ship from any side.
The second type is a wall of water.
It's very tall and it looks like a wall of water approaching you.
The single wave I just talked about can
easily die down in open water and lasts only for a few seconds.
In the case of the second wave, when it's a wall of water,
it can travel, potentially, a distance up to approx. 6 miles.
The third type of rogue wave is called the "Three Sisters."
These are three waves,
the middle one is the tallest,
with the ones next to it being shorter.
However, all three of them are dangerous for ships.
The first type of wave develops in a few seconds,
hits a peak, becomes large, and then dies down in seconds.
You don't get the time to react to it.
In the case of the second type of wave, when it's a wall of water, again,
it doesn't look very tall far away as it does when it's closer to you,
and at the same time, as it travels faster, again your reaction time is reduced.
The same is the case with the third type called the Three Sisters.
In all of these cases
you're forced to confront a wave, one way or another.
If could hit the side of the ship, causing damage.
It could hit the front as well, breaking the ship.
In all of these cases, no matter what you do,
there's always one risk.
You can either capsize if it hits you from the side,
or your vessel can break if it hits you head-on,
Your next question must be about how rogue waves are formed.
There are different things that have been done,
different experiments have been performed.
The clear theory or law behind the
formation of a rogue wave is still unclear,
but one thing a lot of people tend to agree on is
called constructive interference.
You usually face this in the south part of South Africa.
If you look at South Africa, the Agulhas Current comes from the Indian Ocean,
Which moves downwards, southwards.
Off to the other side is the Benguela Current.
When they meet and interfere with each other in such a way
that their crests and troughs overlap,
a rogue wave is formed for a few seconds.
It has been proved in laboratories that this is one way
rogue waves are formed.
And that's exactly why rogue waves are so common in the south of South Africa.
It's because of the Benguela Current and Agulhas Current.
A lot of abnormally high waves in the south of South Africa have been recorded.
It has also been recorded that a lot of abnormal waves have
caused a lot of ships to sink.
Additionally, there's a gas drilling platform called the FA Platform
which has gathered a lot of data over the years.
From 1998 to 2003,
the drilling platform's sensors have recorded around 1500 rogue waves.
But there have been numerous incidents where the height of a significant wave
was four to 10 times shorter than that of a rogue wave.
It also detected a wave with a height of around 48 meters
or around 155 feet.
That's the size of a sixteen-story building.
Aside from this seemingly evident phenomenon,
our computer simulations or nonlinear solutions, or equations have also proven
at least theoretically,
that without any reason, any cause, any current,
a wave could suck the energy of the waves around it,
and rise.
At least that has been proven theoretically now.
Now we can say that all the incidents reported by seamen for centuries
about towering waves forming for a few seconds, then dying down,
are true.
Another thing seamen have been talking about
are rogue holes. Now, what are rogue holes?
They're the exact opposite of what rogue waves are.
A rogue wave is high,
a rogue hole looks like a hole in the sea.
Not actually a hole, it's a strong depression.
And theoretically, it's proven that it's also possible.
All the tales about seamen seeing "serpent tails" out of water,
or serpent tails "pulling" water in, of course, weren't actually snakes or serpents,
but at least the phenomenon exists.
It's acknowledged that it exists.
There are a lot of cases of ships being damaged, delayed.
And in the next port,
when charters and receivers would open cases on ships
where captains would claim a large wave hit them,
or a hole/depression in the sea momentarily sucked their ship in.
About how a lot of energy was transferred, damaging their ship.
Nobody acknowledged those claims in court.
But now, at least, people know
that both phenomena are possible.
Rogue waves exist, and so do rogue holes.
And 25 years ago from now (2020) we believed
that if we wanted to see a wave 20 meters or taller,
and if you wanted to see three of those, you'd have to wait 20,000 years.
But today we know that
you don't even have to wait 24 hours to see a wave like that.
So this was today's video.
I hope you enjoyed today's video because it was full of information.
If you did enjoy this video,
don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to the channel.
Take good care of yourselves,
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my Orange Shots family,
and to-be Orange Shots family.
Take very good care of yourselves.
This is Orange Shots.
I'm Zahid Nisar.
ALLAH Hafiz!