The Bermuda Triangle: A Breeding Ground for Rogue Waves or a Pit of Human Mistakes?

Pedro_P

Credit: Shutterstock

▼ … And then they justdisappeared.
The Bermuda Triangle, a mysterious stretch of ocean between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and the tip of Florida, has allegedly, throughout the years, swallowed a horde of unsuspecting ships, planes and people.
Many tales have been told about the vanishings. Aliens captured the humans for research. Some geomagnetic storm confused the pilots' navigational systems. The lost continent of Atlantis sucked the vessels into its grasp with a mysterious, unidentified force. Better yet, strong vortexes slurped the victims straight into another dimension.
But scientists throughout the years have pointed out that there are plausible explanations for the vanishings, and that the risks of traveling through the Bermuda Triangle are no different than other spots in the ocean.
New life has been breathed into one such theory: that the vessels could have easily been overcome by giant and unexpected rogue waves. This hypothesis isn't new, but a group of U.K. scientists recently discussed the evidence for freak waves and other theories (including the role of human error) in a three-episode documentary series "The Bermuda Triangle Enigma," produced by the BBC for Channel 5.
"There is no doubt this area is prone to rogue waves," Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton and one of the scientists on the team, told Live Science. They are possible "anywhere you get multiple storms coming together."
Rogue waves are steep and tall, like "walls of water," and they often hit unexpectedly, according to the National Oceanic and  Atmospheric Administration. The tip of South Africa, for example, is very prone to them, where waves from storms in the South Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean all come together at once, Boxall said. Indeed, there were similar disappearances of big container vessels and tankers off the tip of South Africa throughout the years, he said.

This also holds true for the Bermuda Triangle, where storms can comefrom all directions, like Mexico, the equator and farther east in the Atlantic. If each wave can reach over 30 feet (10 meters) tall, occasionally they can coincide at the right moment and create a rogue, or "freak," wave that can be over 100 feet (30 m) high.
Engineers at the University of Southampton in England built some ship models, including one of the USS Cyclops, a vessel that vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in 1918 with over 300 people on board.
They simulated rogue waves in a wave tank and found that, indeed, ships can sink quickly if hit by them. The bigger the ship, the bigger the difficulty staying afloat, they found. Small ships can get swamped by them, but sometimes they can ride the wave if they hit it bow-on, Boxall said. But big ships — designed to be supported in the front by the top of one wave and in the back by the top of another — snap in two.
Gas bubbles, magnetic anomalies…humans being humans? (▪ ▪ ▪)

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Rushcourt71

Pedro, what are your own thoughts and opinions on the issue. Have you read widely on the subject and can help lay readers like me know more about accurate ideas relating to the Bermuda Triangle?

Chang Tikhak

The mystery lives on

Bhuvan73

Very interesting article. Need more research and investigation with help of GPS and unmanned vehicles to solve this mystery.

sakhi

interesting...

Rushcourt71

"In a 2013 study, the World Wide Fund for Nature identified the world's 10 most dangerous waters for shipping, but the Bermuda Triangle was not among them."

Source: Wikipedia

Indibekar

i heard about some anomalies which occurred every now and then. if i get time i will talk about this in a future thread.

tuli08@

can somebody suggest a few interesting books on this topic? I bough one once..can't remember the name...but it wasn't good

cabrito

we can use available resources like satellites  with high resolution camera monitoring the region and also drones to capture and transmit live images  to resolve the  puzzle,it is doable nowadays.

soothsayer

the triangle has provoked more dialogue than ever and ever effort to get closer only makes it more mysterious