‘Water UFO’: mysterious and not fully explained phenomena in the oceans

For man, the deepest parts of the sea have long been a strange and terrifying place. Perhaps no tales are more enduring and spectacular than those related to different seas’ locations. Take, for example, the Bermuda Triangle or the “Flying Dutchmen,” both of which seem to be operational ships abandoned by their crews. Many of them were given a fair explanation, while others remained mysteries, despite being backed up by a lot of evidence.

Marine anomalies are commonly referred to as UFOs – unidentified floating objects – in the same way as UFOs are now officially referred to be “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Based on how they are noticed, these phenomena may be separated into two categories: visual and audio. It’s hardly surprising that the majority of sound abnormalities were discovered in the second half of the twentieth century when submarines and techniques for detecting them became commonplace. The first class of UFOs, on the other hand, has been described since antiquity. Let us begin with them.

Wicked carousels

The ability of many marine animals to bioluminescence has long been recognized. Some plankton species generate enough light to be seen by the naked eye. This phenomenon is linked to the majority of incidents of witnessing any form of illumination on or right under the water’s surface. This is, of course, from a scientific standpoint. When it comes to bicycles, tales of weird circles on the sea are widespread. Let’s be clear: despite the popularity of these claims, there isn’t a single piece of documented proof of such occurrences.

They’re known as “Buddha’s wheels” or “devilish carousels.” According to one theory, Eastern navigators gave the glowing circles on the ocean the first name, while European navigators gave them the second. Furthermore, the Chinese saw these occurrences as a good omen, but Christians saw them as a negative omen. Except for the broadcast on Channel One, it’s impossible to locate authorized confirmation of these reports, therefore let’s go on to the following topic.

Krakens and sharks

By the 1970s, rational people were persuaded that tales of huge sea monsters were nothing more than the product of sailors’ irrational fantasies. What could only occur to them after six months of eating corned meat washed down with water from barrels that had bloomed? No, legends may occasionally be shown to be real.

The USS Stein DE-1065, which was patrolling the Pacific coast of South America in the spring of 1978, was attacked by a huge squid. The protective housing of the nasal sonar was the target of a deep-sea behemoth that suddenly neared the surface. Acoustics raised the alert, but a loud abnormal noise abruptly stopped their work. The seamen were perplexed when they examined the bulb at the front end of the ship’s keel, which housed the instrument.

Almost 10% of the rubber-like layer had been severely degraded. They discovered bits of chitin in wounds and scratches, which were comparable in composition to the tissues of squid suckers. According to some estimations, the difficulty was that, based on the size of these suckers, the mollusk’s length should have reached 45 meters. That’s over three times the maximum length of the enormous deep-sea squid as estimated hypothetically. There is no record of anyone’s hearing being harmed as a result of hits on the sensitive underwater sound receiver.

However, this is hardly the only instance of aquatic creatures attacking the US Navy. Around the same time, Raytheon supplied active sonar stations AN/BQR-19 to American submarines: costly and complex equipment with neoprene-covered outside pieces. Suddenly, spherical holes with a depth of one or two millimeters started to form on this material in practically every journey.

According to open sources, the military was primarily concerned about harm to the look or some form of malfunction caused by these tunnels. According to some accounts, the submarine’s greatest “wounds” resulted in leaks of a unique sound-conducting oil that actually “blinded” it. In any event, the situation was thoroughly investigated by both the fleet leadership and the hydroacoustic station manufacturer.

Engineers said that no animal could cause such devastation. The military started to accuse Soviet “colleagues” of secretly developing a new weapon against nuclear submarines: they claim the communists had developed a new weapon against nuclear submarines. The mystery has been solved by naval scientists. They recalled that there is an exceedingly uncomfortable animal in tropical waters: the Brazilian luminous shark. They came up with the name cookiecutter shark to describe the particular form of her jaws (the first word means a device that cuts dough for cookies in even circles).

This disgusting-looking monster, which is approximately half a meter in length and hunts in groups, attacks whatever it perceives to be food. It makes no difference whether it’s a whale or a submarine.

Brazilian luminous sharks tear a massive portion of meat from their meal with their razor-sharp teeth and swim back to a depth of more than three kilometers. A faint green glow shines from their bellies. The damage to the nuclear submarine’s neoprene portions was averted once the neoprene parts were coated with fiberglass, which the fish couldn’t bite through.

Fun fact: history repeated itself 10 years later. The navy seemed to have forgotten about the shark incident and failed to cover the new rubberized outside sections of the submarines with solid materials. Nature didn’t take long to intervene: the fish wreaked havoc on the US Navy’s finances once again.

Is it possible that Cthulhu is reawakening?

It was no accident that Lovecraft was mentioned. The writer gave a very realistic location for the undersea metropolis of R’lyeh in his writings. This is the home of a monstrous creature known as Cthulhu, the Great Ancient Lord of the Worlds. He sleeps under normal circumstances, but he will wipe all human civilization if he wakes up.

What does all of this have to do with reality? Although it seems to be nothing, an exceptionally strong infrasonic wave was captured in 1997. According to Lovecraft’s account, it set off from somewhere near the Pacific Ocean, where Cthulhu is said to be lurking.

The overall quality of the sound, which is extremely close to the sounds generated by a live organism, adds to the intrigue of the scenario. If these “gurgles” (Bloop is the official name of this UFO) were made by an animal, it would have to be many times the size of a blue whale. Several hypotheses have been proposed.

A mix of variables was considered, including increased natural infrasound, noise from a significant concentration of marine life, and the grinding of ice on the ocean bottom. Scientists concurred in 2012 that the most probable origin of such a sound was a massive iceberg shattering.

Other outcomes of SOSUS’s efforts

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) obtained access to a sophisticated weapon called SOSUS after the Cold War ended. A sophisticated American submarine tracking and tracing technology is hidden behind this name. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was no reason to keep track of the Russian nuclear submarines, which were no longer Soviet.

Some SOSUS nodes were decommissioned, and the level of secrecy was reduced. “Civilian” scientists now have access to high-precision hydroacoustic devices as a consequence. The number of sound abnormalities discovered in the water has been increasing since the early 1990s. There are both conditionally established causes (Bloop) and unexplained reasons among them. By the way, all of the peculiar noises that were described were linked to very enormous icebergs by a curious coincidence.

But there are also genuine mysteries. Upsweep and Whistle, for example. The initial anomaly was discovered in August 1991, and since then, it has been detected every spring and autumn. The source of the sound lies in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and it might be related to volcanic activity. Or it could not be: it seems that it won’t work out in the end – each year, it becomes quieter. On the other hand, the “whistle,” was only heard once and with just one hydrophone 1,500 kilometers off the coast of Mexico. It has a unique spectrogram as well as a high infrasound frequency.

The world’s most lonely whale

The so-called 52-hertz whale is one of the ocean’s most intriguing mysteries. Specific singing at 52-hertz has been documented in several locations of the Pacific Ocean since the 1980s. Large whales produce lower sounds: blue whales emit 10-39 hertz, fin whales emit 20 hertz. These noises are structurally linked to massive sea creatures despite the unusual frequency.

By 1992, the distinctive “singing” had decreased somewhat, but the remainder of the traits had stayed mostly the same. The sound source migrates 708 to 11,062 kilometers every season and moves at a pace of 30 to 70 kilometers per day. Whales are known for their unusual behavior. Based on all of these clues, biologists and oceanologists hypothesized that hydrophones were recording the “voice” of an undiscovered species, a mutant, a hybrid, or a person with birth problems.

In any event, if it’s a whale, it’s already been labeled the world’s most lonely. Other members of his species, on the other hand, are unable to comprehend singing at such a high frequency. The noises made by the 52 Hz are merely noise to them. There’s also a more positive theory that this singing is one of the “whale dialects” found in a previously undiscovered population of a species.

Objects that remain still

The word “Unidentified Flying Objects” refers to a movable or transient phenomenon. However, there are a vast number of immobile anomalous objects in the World Ocean. Even if we exclude the entirely fictitious claims about Atlantis, the collection of strange seabed structures is still astounding. The following are the most notable:

*Terraced formations in the Ryukyu Islands, or “Yonaguni Monument” – situated at a shallow depth near Yonaguni stone constructions on the Japanese island of Yonaguni. The scientific community’s consensus is merely a rare geological phenomenon despite the right geometric forms. It doesn’t stop many pseudo-archaeologists and fans of the unknown from seeking proof of the object’s man-made origins.

*A block of limestone (calcirudite) measuring 12 meters in length and weighing 15 tons lies at the bottom of the Pantelleria Vecchia Bay in the Strait of Tunis. There are three tidy circular holes in the megalith, at least one of which passes through it. This massive stone was most likely processed by a man about 12-15 thousand years ago, during the Mesolithic (Stone Age). The megalith rock is at least 40 thousand years old, according to analysis, while the bottom sediments underneath it are no more than 10,000 years old.

*Regular geometric formations on the shelf of the western side of the island of Cuba are known as the “Cuban underwater city.” During a reconnaissance of the seafloor relief in 2001, they were identified using sonar. The use of a remotely operated underwater robot in subsequent studies has produced more problems than answers. Pyramidal and ring constructions built of granite blocks were seen in the camera view. It is intended to do more research on schooling, however, this will need funds.

As well as other conundrums

The claim that humans have researched the depths of the oceans better than near space has been a source of contention for a long time. However, there is some truth to it. The seas are a tough environment for researchers to work in, yet they also have a massive volume. It’s hardly unexpected that there are still a lot of new things to learn about it.

Only those sea abnormalities with the tiniest scientific explanation or mention in numerous separate authoritative sources have been examined in this article. Of course, there is a slew of additional (yet-to-be-explained) occurrences. For example, in the Fury and Heckle Straits, the enigmatic “ping” (onomatopoeia for sonar) drives away the living organisms. The Canadian military began an in-depth investigation into this occurrence in 2016, but it has so far been unsuccessful.