As amazing and breathtaking as
the world’s oceans may be, they’re even more mysterious and sometimes cling
unyieldingly to their secrets and mysteries. There are some parts of the ocean
that no person has ever even been able to visit, and it’s in these parts that
some of Earth’s unsolved mysteries lay waiting to be uncovered. Alternatively,
strange things sometimes happen right where people can witness it but remain
mysterious nevertheless.
10.
USS Scorpion
In February 1968, the submarine
USS Scorpion departed from Norfolk, Virginia, and headed toward the
Mediterranean. It had almost a decade of reliable service behind it, and there
were no qualms about the journey as the sub set out to the open sea. Three
months later, the Scorpion ran into unknown trouble, and its broken pieces
ended up scattered on the ocean floor. On May 27, 1968, family members of the
Scorpion‘s crew waited in vain on a dock for their loved ones to return. It was
October before the Navy would find the wreckage of the Scorpion and realize the
horrible truth—that all 99 men onboard had lost their lives.
Investigations into the cause of
the tragedy proved fruitless, even after Robert Ballard visited the site in 1985.
He soon moved on to bigger things when he discovered the wreck of the Titanic
that same year. In 2012, calls were made for new expeditions to the Scorpion‘s
wreck site so that experts can once again try to fit the pieces of the mystery
together.
Nothing came of this, and the
theories continue to fly. Some conspiracy theories hold that the sub may have
been downed by a Soviet attack that they never saw coming, while others believe
that a mishap with one of the Scorpion’s own torpedoes may be to blame. Experts
believe that if the sub had mistakenly fired off a torpedo during training, it
would have turned back on itself and hit the sub, which would have been the
closest and possibly the only target at the time. Others are adamant that if
the sub’s propeller shaft malfunctioned, it may have caused stress to the
engine coupling. This might have led to it breaking, causing water to overrun
the sub.
The only thing certain about what
happened to the USS Scorpion all those years ago is that some family and friends
still wonder to this day what exactly happened to the 99 men out there in the
ocean on that fateful May day.
9. Murder at Sea
Cell phones are lost every day,
some by accident, and some stolen. The majority of times, these incidents mean
absolutely nothing other than that someone has to go and get a new phone. Other
times, an innocent-looking cell phone might just harbor a terrible secret. This
is exactly what happened when an abandoned cell phone was found in a taxi in
Fiji in 2014. A video found on this phone landed on the Internet not long after
and eventually attracted the attention of police.
The almost seven-minute-long
video contains chilling footage of four men clinging to the wreckage of a small
boat or treading water in the open sea while surrounded by laughing men on
several tuna long-liners. One of the men can be seen trying to lift his arms.
The next moment, he is shot in the head by someone onboard one of the boats. As
the video unfolds, the other three men are also shot in cold blood as their killers
are urged to do so by a loud voice over a loudspeaker. They then continue to
laugh carefree while posing for selfies.
In spite of many witnesses, not
one of these murders was reported, and they only came to light after the cell
phone video was posted online. Taiwan authorities tried to investigate after
they identified one of the fishing boats as belonging to the country, but the
investigation hit a dead end, as they could not identify the captain or crew.
The victims’ bodies were never found, and the reason for their murders remains
a mystery. The exact location of the tragedy also has yet to be identified.
8. Baltic Sea Submarine
Toward the latter part of 2014,
Sweden was aggrieved by Moscow after two Russian fighter jets entered its
airspace without permission. Around the same time, a government intelligence
official was abducted and forcefully taken to Moscow by Russian agents. A
Russian surveillance craft had to be escorted out of Estonian airspace by NATO
jets just a month later.
Adding to the Swedish jitters,
several citizens reported seeing a mystery vessel, described as a Russian
submarine, in the Baltic Sea. It seemed to them that the sub may have run into
trouble, which would have been the reason for its stationary position. The
military wasted no time in investigating these sightings, taking a whole week
to search land and water for any trace of the mysterious sub. The media
immediately jumped on the bandwagon, calling the search “the hunt for Reds in
October.” It naturally didn’t help that the Swedish military directly related
their search to “foreign underwater activity.” This only fueled the
“conspiracy.”
Amid all the searching, clear
memories of the Cold War came back to those who had lived through it. It was
almost like Deja vu, since in the 1970s and 1980s, Sweden would conduct regular
fruitless searches for foreign (aka Russian) submarines. It would be the same
outcome this time. The mysterious submarine that so many had seen in the Baltic
Sea was never discovered. If it was indeed there, the reason will never be
known, either.
7. Bermeja Island
In the 1970s, Bermeja Island
served as a marker for Mexico to set its 200-nautical-mile economic zone. Just
about 20 years later, the island disappeared without a trace. Along with the
island went important documents containing a treaty regarding major oil
reserves within the island’s region. The disappearance of these documents
immediately gave rise to conspiracy theories that the CIA had something to do
with the vanishing island, ensuring that the US would get the oil. The main
theory has it that the CIA actually blew up the island in order to expand the
US’s economic zone.
The island is mentioned in a 1998
book about Mexican islands, disregarding the fact that a fishing expedition
party already reported that they were unable to locate it the previous year.
Bermeja Island was found on historical maps between 1535 and 1775, after which
it also mysteriously seemed to vanish from any geographical records, right up
until 1857, when a US map once again included it. The timelines vary according
to different sources, with some saying that the Mexican government actually
went looking for the island in 1997 but were unable to locate it.
Further research in 2009 also
didn’t turn up any missing islands, stirring further confusion as to whether
the island ever actually existed. The mystery of Bermeja Island seems likely to
remain for a while.
6. Gulf of Alaska Whale Deaths
In 2015, 30 whales stranded
themselves on Alaskan shores. The majority died within the Kodiak archipelago.
Upon investigation, experts found that all of the whales except for one were
fin whales. While toxic algae seemed to be the logical reason for the deaths of
these mammals at first, scientists soon realized that it could not be the case,
since no other species turned up dead on any of the beaches. A few months
earlier a mass die-off of common murres also occurred along the shores of
Alaska, but scientists aren’t certain that the birds and the whales died of the
same cause.
Considering that there may have
been more dead whales out there, reached first by scavengers or floating out of
reach in the ocean, the fact that the mystery of the mass whale death (up to
three times the average) remains unsolved is quite disturbing. The ongoing
investigation is focusing on nine fin whale carcasses floating near Kodiak
Island.
Experts believe that all the
whales died at the same time. Tests for the ingestion of toxic matter have been
done on one of them so far, and a full-fledged investigation could possibly
take years to complete. Even such an undertaking might yield no answers as to
what may have caused the death of these whales.
5. Gulf of Mexico Shipwreck
In 2001, ExxonMobil got a lot
more than they bargained for when they laid an oil pipeline in the Gulf of
Mexico. While busy with the construction of the pipe, they struck a
200-year-old shipwreck lying forgotten about 800 meters (2,600 ft) under the
surface. Immediately, marine archaeologists took the opportunity to explore the
wreck by using the latest technology available at the time.
Brett A. Phaneuf, a scientist
from Texas who put the expedition together, had expected to finish the
investigation by 2002, but what came to be known as “the curse of the wreck”
seemed to throw more than just a spanner into the works. Twice, he and his team
of experts tried to extract artifacts from the ship without any luck.
On his third attempt to bring up
something from the ship using a robotic submarine, things once again went
wrong. Not even 30 minutes into the water, the sub’s hydraulic system gave in,
as did the electronics monitoring the sub. After these problems were sorted out
over the next two hours, the submarine safely reached the wreck, and Phaneuf
immediately noticed a piece of wood stuck awkwardly at the bottom.
But before he and his crew could
investigate, the sonar failed, as did the camera’s ability to zoom in on
objects. Not wanting to give up, the operators of the sub tried to use the
robotic arm to pull a sheet of copper off the ship’s hull, as this might have
indicated whether the ship was indeed built in the early 1800s, when the
British Navy started nailing copper plates to their warships to protect them
from insects. Phaneuf thought that the signature mark or name of the
coppersmith who provided the copper might be visible on it. The submarine arm
had the sheet firmly in its grip as it backed away, but then the sheet tore,
leaving only a small piece stuck in the claw.
The next efforts to obtain a
piece of the ship or its artifacts saw a new robot submarine getting lost in
the water after veering out of control. Then, the robotic arm of the next one
was too short to reach anything from the ship. Another time, a robot sub
managed to grab the stern post of the ship when its hydraulics failed, and the
stern post was lost.
Many more mishaps continued to
occur, leading some to believe that the wreck was indeed cursed, and the ghosts
of those who may have perished aboard the ship did not want to be disturbed.
The shipwreck and its “treasures” therefore remain a mystery.
4. SS Edmund Fitzgerald
Lake Superior is so big that it
behaves like an inland sea, including nasty storms. In November 1975, a massive
storm battered the lake just as the gigantic ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald
departed for Detroit. By the next morning, the Fitzgerald and another carrier,
the Arthur M. Anderson, had altered their routes to a more northerly direction
as their captains tried to shield the ships and crew from the increasingly
strong gales.
Captain Ernest McSorley, in
charge of the Fitzgerald, knew that this was no regular storm, and he reported
to the Coast Guard that his ship was in peril, taking on huge waves and listing
to the side. McSorley decided to try to make it to Whitefish Bay to get the
Fitzgerald out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, about an hour after the captain
made his intentions known over the radio, the ship disappeared from radar.
There had been no call for assistance before the communication blackout.
The Anderson made it to Whitefish
Bay in one piece, but its captain, Bernie Cooper, heroically decided to head
back out into the awful storm to search for the crew of the Fitzgerald. They
only turned up two battered lifeboats and a single life jacket floating in the
rough water.
Just a week later, a sonar ship
searching for the Fitzgerald found its wreck lying more than 150 meters (500
ft) under the water, its taconite pellets scattered on the lake floor. The
carrier was torn apart. However, not one body was ever recovered from the
shipwreck. Even though it is fairly certain that the storm was the main factor
in the ship’s fate, it remains a mystery to this day exactly what caused the
ship to finally go down and perhaps more importantly where the remains of its
crew members lie.
The mystery remains after 40
years, as do the superstitions. Freight ships watch the weather report with an
eagle eye and will not start on any journey should a storm be forecast for the
area.
3. The Patanela
In October 1988, Michael Calvin
and his friend John Blissett set out to sea on a luxury schooner called the
Patanela. The two crewmen had started off from Fremantle, Australia, on their
way to the Whitsundays. From there, they continued on to Port Lincoln, where
Calvin mailed a letter to his twin sister, in which he wrote of the good time
he was having and how good the weather at sea was.
Calvin and Blissett were also
planning to start their own charter business after they had been home for the
Christmas holidays, since they had been given permission to use the Patanela
for that very purpose. The two young men were very excited as they continued on
their journey to Arlie Beach. Calvin also mentioned to his sister that he and
Blissett decided to put a message in a bottle stating that whoever found it would
be entitled to a free holiday onboard the luxury boat.
Tragically, Calvin and Blissett’s
dreams were never to be realized, as a few weeks after Michael Calvin posted
the happy letter to his sister, the Patanela disappeared off the coast of
Sydney. Michael Calvin and John Blissett were never seen or heard from again.
On New Year’s Eve 2007, Sheryl
Waideman, her husband, and her brother set off to the beach near Eucla to ring
in the new year with swimming and beachcombing. Waideman was strolling along
the beach looking for “treasure” when she saw a bottle stuck upside-down in the
sand. Seeing that there was a note with writing on it inside the bottle,
Waideman took it back home with her and found the following written on it:
Hi there. Out here in the lonely Southern
Ocean and thought we would give away a free holiday in the Whitsunday Islands
in north Queensland, Australia. Our ship is travelling from Fremantle, Western
Aust, to Queensland to work as a charter vessel.
The note included John Blissett’s
telephone number as well as the Patanela’s position in the ocean at the time.
It indicated that foul play could be ruled out as a possible cause for the
boat’s disappearance, but the mystery of what exactly happened out at sea in
1988 remains.
2. John Halford
In 2011, 63-year-old John Halford
ran his own successful business and was about to celebrate his 25th wedding
anniversary with his wife, Ruth, with whom he shared three beautiful children.
Halford was on top of the world, but he still had a dream that he wanted to
fulfill before retiring—to go on a cruise. His dream came true that same year
when he set off on a seven-day Thomson’s cruise on March 31.
Halford seemingly had the time of
his life on the cruise liner, judging by the texts he sent his wife. Near midnight
on the last evening of the cruise, John Halford was enjoying cocktails at the
ship’s bar as the ship neared its final destination. He had sent his wife a
text earlier with his flight details so that she could pick him up from the
airport.
Ruth, who had missed her husband
very much during his well-deserved break, couldn’t wait to go to the airport
and meet him. Before she could leave, however, she received a call from the
cruise company to inform her that John would not be at the airport, as he had gone
missing from the ship at some point between midnight and 7:00 AM the next
morning, when all the other passengers disembarked.
John Halford was never seen
again. His wife and children fear that he went over the railing of the cruise
liner, although the Thomson’s company strongly denied that this would be
possible. Tragically, Halford is just one of more than 150 people who’ve
mysteriously disappeared on cruise ships since the turn of the new millennium.
1. Aegean Sea Ruins
Toward the end
of 2014, remnants of an ancient civilization, previously thought to be simply
the remains of docks, were found just off the Greek island of Delos. The Greek
media pounced on the news of the discovery, aptly named the “underwater
Pompeii.” The discovery, which included the remains of a pottery workshop,
terracotta pots, and a kiln, was made on the coast of Delos. This puzzled
experts, as previous similar discoveries were all made near ports.
During their
excavation of the site, archaeologists also found multiple large rocks set out
in front of the pottery workshop and the ruins of other buildings. Many of the
structures found remain unidentified, adding to the bigger mystery of how and
why the ancient city ended up under the sea to begin with.
The workshop
resembles similar ones found previously in Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Archaeologists are continuing their research in relation to this latest
discovery, as they are expecting it to bring to light more details of the
history of Delos Island, which was abandoned in the sixth century AD and today
is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
