Most of us have heard of the Bermuda
Triangle. It's the stuff of legend and
rumor and myth where ships and planes
disappear without trace. But what if I
told you it had an evil twin? Not in
Bermuda, not quite a triangle, and
arguably much more deadly in modern
times. A patch of water not recognized
on maps, but capable of swallowing
entire ships whole, including the
biggest British ship ever to be lost at
sea.
This is not some historic wooden
gallion, but a modern bulk carrier.
Nearly 45 m wide and 300 m long, bigger
even than the Titanic, and fully
equipped with modern navigational aids,
including a magnetic compass, gyro
compass, automatic pilot, radar, echo
sounder, speed log, and satellite
navigator.
How does something like that just
disappear? The Dragon's Triangle, as it
has become known, lies off the coast of
Japan and is named after the legends of
a devastating firebreathing dragon that
stalks the waves.
For some, this region is the Pacific's
answer to the Bermuda Triangle. But what
makes this different is that the legends
here are older, darker, and far less
understood.
So fearsome is this area that much of
Kubla Khan's 13th century invasion force
lies buried in its depths. Hundreds of
ships and thousands of troops just gone.
That single event alone blows Bermuda
out of the water. The disappearances are
real, that's for sure. But are the
stories? And could those fireb breathing
dragons have anything to do with the
fact this is one of the most
volcanically active places on Earth? I'm
James Stewart and you're watching
Astramm Earth. Join me for this voyage
into the most deadly part of the Pacific
Ocean. We'll explore undersea volcanoes,
tackle ocean gas, and even encounter
deadly bubbles in a stretch of ocean
feared by fishermen studied by
scientists and shrouded in stories of
sea dragons, magnetic anomalies, and
unexplained disappearances.
Using modern scientific analysis and the
most comprehensive data available, we'll
finally put the mysteries to bed and
uncover what's really hiding beneath the
waves.
Okay, let's start with the basics. What
and where are we actually talking about?
Well, like any good mystery, no one can
100% actually agree on this part, but
we're going in search of facts. So,
let's try and nail this jelly to the
wall. We're in the western Pacific Ocean
off the southeast coast of Japan. In the
late 80s, author Charles Burlet, who
wrote extensively on the Bermuda
Triangle and its Pacific twin, drew a
line from western Japan, just north of
Tokyo, to a point in the Pacific at a
latitude of approximately 140° east.
This triangle sort of uh then runs west
southwest to the Bonan Islands down to
Guam, the US island territory. key to
American military strategy in the
Pacific before heading west to Taiwan
and then back to Japan. Longitude is
about 35° east if you are keeping track.
Now, you won't find this triangle on
Google Maps, but it's caused enough
peril over the centuries for the stories
to persist. Other sources say this
treacherous stretch of ocean lies 100 km
south of Tokyo, close to the island of
Miyak in the Philippine Sea. And in the
1950s, Japanese newspapers, including
Yomi Orium, mapped the area as closer to
Japan and centering on the Azou Islands.
They started calling it Ma Noi, which
roughly translates as Sea of Troubles,
Devil's Sea, or Troublesome Sea, which
as we'll see is very appropriate. But
it's also been called the Dragon's
Triangle, the Pacific Bermuda Triangle,
and the Formosa Triangle. Confused yet?
Me, too. So, from here on in, and for
ease, I'm going to refer to it as the
Dragon's Triangle. No matter what you
call this place, like its more
sensationalist partner in crime, the
Bermuda Triangle, it's notorious for
making things disappear without trace.
And it begins, as it often does, with a
man setting out to expand his empire.
It's the late 13th century and Mongol
Emperor Kubla Khan has set his sights on
Japan. Grandson of Genghis Khan,
conqueror of China and famously
immortalized by Marco Polo, Khan wants
to add goldri trading power Japan to his
collection. He loses not one but two
fleets in the process, both to the
dragon's triangle, both to violent
storms. As one samurai put it, a green
dragon had raised its head from the
waves and sulurous flames filled the
firmament between the fleets. Kubla Khn
lost hundreds of ships and thousands of
sailors. Splintered debris floated
everywhere. Men and horses drowned.
Their cries lost in the roar of wind and
waves. These may have been mighty armies
on land, but they stood no chance
against the monster of the sea. The
Japanese credited the storms to divine
intervention, describing them as kmakazi
or divine wind, a concept we're now more
familiar with in connection with the
Second World War. Over centuries,
stories about this area swirled and
grew. Chinese mythology speaks of
dragons stirring up violent storms,
whirlpools, and even rogue waves.
Fishermen reported glowing lights and
bubbling waters, claiming to see
serpentlike creatures the size of boats.
So far so mysterious, but not much
actual evidence to latch on to. Yet the
stories persist into the modern era, and
they get even more sinister.
One of the most famous incidents
involves the Kaio Maru, a scientific
research vessel. The ship sailed from
Tokyo on the 23rd of September, 1952,
with 31 people on board, nine scientists
and 22 crew. At 8:30 p.m. that same day,
a routine message was received, but the
crew were never heard from again. There
was no distress call. The ship had
apparently vanished without trace in the
Dragon's Triangle. But it wasn't just
brave sailors meeting their watery ends.
The skies above weren't safe either.
On Friday, March 22nd, 1957,
a US Air Force flight left Micronisia
for Yokata Air Force Base in Tokyo with
57 passengers and 10 crew members on
board. The plane was a C97 Strato
freighter, a 4engine military transport
developed from the famous B-29 bomber.
With its distinctive double bubble
fuselage, the C97 was a military
workhorse with a range of nearly 6,500
km. It was so reliable it remained in
service for over three decades. Now,
this particular aircraft was on a
scheduled military air transport service
flight originating out of Travis Air
Force Base in California. It made two
stopovers in Hawaii and Wake Island
before setting off for Tokyo.
About 320 km off the Japanese coast at
20 to 1 in the morning local time, the
C97's crew informed air traffic control
of their position and that all was okay
on board. They were cruising at 2,500 m,
and they never arrived at their
destination. Huge search and rescue
efforts were immediately launched. 48
Air Force and Navy planes scoured an
estimated 140,000 square kilometers of
ocean without success, as did a fleet of
US Navy and Japanese coast guards and
fishing boats. Search and rescue
continued for 8 days, but no trace of
the plane or crew was ever found. The
Dragon's Triangle had claimed another
victim, and its thirst for blood wasn't
over yet. There is one last lost ship in
this deadly catalog. The biggest one
yet, and it's the most striking story of
them all.
The MV Darbashier's final voyage began
in July 1980 when she sailed from Canada
to Japan, laden with nearly 160,000 tons
of iron ore. This was no fishing boat,
no small research vessel. The MV
Darbasher is the biggest British
registered merchant ship ever to have
been lost at sea. Built on Tinside in
the UK, she was only four years old,
bigger than the Titanic, and classed A1
by Lloyd's register. That is the top
classification for merchant ships. On
the 9th of September 1980, just a few
days out from Kawasaki, the Darbashier
made her last radio transmission at
10:19 Zulu, which is military speak for
GMT. There was no Mayday distress call.
The Darbashir simply disappeared off the
charts. All 44 crew members were given
up for dead and the ship declared lost.
You can see why believers of the
Dragon's Triangle latch on to things
like the Darbashir. She was thought to
be unsinkable. She had experienced crew
and yet she went missing in the heart of
the Dragon's Triangle, never to be found
again. Now, make no mistake, these
tragedies absolutely happened. And
heartbreakingly, thousands of lives have
been lost. But something about this
doesn't feel quite right, and that's
because there's a reason that the
stories of the Dragon's Triangle endure.
Let's go back to author Charles Burlitz.
Now, Burlitz liked a mystery. His 1974
book on the Bermuda Triangle put it
firmly on the map and catapulted him
into the bestseller lists. 20 million
copies sold in more than 30 languages.
He offered up some mind-blowing theories
along the way. The lost city of
Atlantis, a portal under the sea in
space and time, electromagnetic and
geospatial anomalies, and of course,
aliens. Ballet mentioned the Dragon's
Triangle in his 1974 bestseller and
doubled down on his theories by
publishing a book solely about it in
1989.
Chapter 1 begins, another triangle of
doom, listing a string of disappearances
from ships to planes to submarines. He
even claimed that the Kaio Maru number
five had been sent out to investigate
some of those disappearances.
Fortunately, for every conspiracist,
there's also a skeptic. Hi. Larry Kush
spent his career doggedly debunking
Beritz's theories, fact-checking them
with real actual facts. What a great
guy. Wish we could get him on the
channel. Kush's 1975 book, The Bermuda
Triangle: Mystery Solved, and his
follow-up research, also dived into the
Dragon Triangle, concluding that
Burlet's string of disappearances just
didn't add up. Yet, surf the dark
corners of the internet, which I try not
to, and the mysteries still lurk.
stories that can lure you in like
sirens. I mean, who wouldn't love an
Alien meets Atlantis meets deep sea
monsters blockbuster? I'd watch that.
But blockbusters don't have to be based
in science or even reality.
Astrometh, on the other hand, does. And
don't get me wrong, some ships and
planes have undoubtedly gone missing in
this ocean. So, what's the truth? Let's
break this story down. What plausible
scientific theories are there? Now, when
it comes to ocean real estate, as with
any other, it's all about location,
location, location. Look at where the
Dragon's Triangle actually is. It's at
the end of continental masses, where
shallow seas meet the plunging depths of
the ocean's deepest trenches. In fact,
the Dragon's Triangle crosses past with
the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana
Trench. If a ship sinks there, it's
pretty much definitely not going to be
found. It's also worth noting that these
oceans are not easy to navigate,
especially not historically. It's hard
to imagine now from the technological
comfort of our 21st century modcons, how
early sellers found their way anywhere,
quite frankly. Compasses going ary is
another popular theory when it comes to
these triangles. Geomagnetic
disturbances that throw navigators off
course. That's normally down to magnetic
declination, i.e. the difference between
the magnetic north pole and the
geographic north pole. Yeah, these two
things are different and they vary
depending on where you are in the world.
At very high latitudes, a compass can
even point south, which is not helpful,
but that doesn't really fly because
navigators are trained to compensate for
magnetic declination. There's an app for
it. You may even have it on your
smartwatch. I don't know. So, why might
ships and planes be disappearing?
Because the truth is out there, and
perhaps we can find it on a map.
The Dragon's Triangle lands slap bang in
the middle of what's known as the
Pacific Ring of Fire. This is one of the
most geologically active places on
Earth. If anywhere could remind you of
the raw power at the core of our planet,
it's this place, a 40,000 km
horseshoeshaped chain tracing the
meeting points of many tectonic plates.
The huge slabs of Earth's crust that fit
together like pieces of a puzzle. This
ring is home to 75% of the planet's
volcanoes and 90% of its earthquakes.
Think of the tectonic plates here as
pieces of a cracked shell resting on the
hot molten rock of the Earth's mantle
very slowly but still moving in what are
known as subduction zones. One plate is
subducted basically shoved under another
releasing magma. And magma means
volcanoes. In any volcanic eruption,
that magma, the molten rock beneath our
feet, is forced up to the surface. Now,
on land, the power of a volcano is
obvious. We can literally see it
explode. But underwater, you see where
I'm going with this? Things work a
little differently as it faces the
crushing pressure off thousands of tons
of seawater. In 2009, an expedition
filmed the West Matter volcano erupting
an incredible 1,200 m beneath the
surface of the Pacific Ocean in an area
between Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga.
Scientists from the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute used a remotely
operated underwater vehicle or ROV to
capture footage of the explosion and the
active formation of what's known as
pillow lava. So-called because of their
shape.
Lava runs hot around 700 to,200°
C and when it hits seawater, it
experiences a dramatic temperature
change. The inner rock stays hot while
the outside cools into a chain of not so
fluffy, but pillows. This was the first
time a deep sea eruption spewing molten
lava had ever been filmed. So, was this
just an isolated instant? No. Check this
out. This blew my mind. It's estimated
that approximately 3/4 of all volcanic
activity on Earth occurs as deep
underwater eruptions. These eruptions
can cause devastating and deadly
tsunamis, violent steam explosions,
clouds of ash and toxic gases. They
release basultic balloons, essentially
gas filled bubbles of lava, and they
create pumis rafts like this one from a
2019 underwater eruption near Tonga. So
big you can see it from space. It's
basically a raft of lava lighter than
water that's roughly the size of
Manhattan.
So, could submarine volcanoes be to
blame for any of the disappearances in
the Dragon's Triangle? The short answer
is yeah, and actually so is the long
answer, and we have evidence. In truth,
and the evidence surrounding underwater volcanoes.
Remember the Caillou Maru number five,
the research vessel lost in 1952 that
Charles Berlet said was sent out to
investigate all of those disappearances
that then disappeared itself without
trace. Well, its disappearance isn't
quite as mysterious as it first sounds.
The Kaio Maru, it turns out, was
actually on a mission to investigate
this very thing. Volcanic activity. What
the crew didn't realize was that they
were sailing into the eye of a volcanic
storm. On the 17th of September 1952, a
small fishing boat reported an eruption
in the vicinity of the Bayonese rocks
about 450 km south of Tokyo. The Kaio
Maru was dispatched 5 days later on the
23rd of September to investigate. One
day later, on the 24th of September, a
tidal gorge nearly 120 km north of the
volcano recorded a 2meter high passing
tsunami. US Navy hydrophones in Hawaii
also recorded underwater sounds of an
eruption. And this is when the Kyomaru
number five went radio silent. A search
and rescue team was immediately
dispatched, but all they could find were
lava pitted fragments of the survey
vessel. The ship had been sunk not by
dragons or aliens, but by a volcanic
eruption. It's worth noting that this
mystery didn't take long actually to
solve. In fact, newspapers were already
reporting it just a few days after the
ship's tragic disappearance. And it
turns out volcanic eruptions aren't the
only things bubbling under the sea with
an ability to sink our ships. Nope, not
dragons still, uh, but ocean burps. In
fact, let's just call them bubbles. In
2016, researchers at the Arctic
University of Norway discovered huge
underwater craters off the coast that
were probably, they said, caused by an
enormous blowout of gas. Methane
hydrates are almost icelike solid
substances found in deep sea sediments
and perafrost where water molecules form
a sort of cage around methane molecules.
Changes in pressure or temperature can
cause seeps or even massive explosive
blowouts like the giant craters in
Norway. Now, here's where it gets
interesting because it's estimated that
2/3 of marine gas hydrates are located
in convergent margins, which yeah, you
guessed it. Convergent margins like the
subduction zones of the ring of fire,
where ocean tectonic plates subduct or
sink beneath the lighter continental
crust. But could a bubble really sink a
ship? A 2022 study published by a team
of researchers at Harbin Engineering
University in China suggests so. To
quote their paper, when the size of the
bubble is close to the characteristic
length of the ship, one single bubble
could sink a ship. This includes gas
bubbles from volcanoes as well as
methane hydrates. Other studies have
similar findings, all in labs, might I
add. All with a lot of physics and a lot
of maths. But who knows how this plays
out on an actual ocean. And all that
stuff we've just talked about is just
what's happening inside our oceans.
Actually, the most dangerous aspect of
the Dragon's Triangle is yet to come.
Because perhaps the biggest suspect of
them all is hiding in plain sight.
Tropical cyclones.
These are rapidly rotating storm systems
characterized by low pressure, strong
winds, heavy rains, and what's known as
organized convection, which is basically
where thunderstorms all gang up and
multiply. Tropical cyclones are one of
the most powerful and destructive forces
on Earth. They're also an essential
feature of the Earth's atmosphere,
transferring heat and energy between the
equator and the poles. Think of a
tropical cyclone as a giant engine that
needs warm, moist air as fuel. And
there's plenty of that in the tropics.
As the sun heats the ocean to around 27°
C, invisible water vapor starts to rise
and cool, condensing into clouds and
then into rain. Vast towering cumulo
nimbus clouds form. The king of clouds
as they're known. These release latent
heat which warms the surrounding air and
makes it rise even faster. Meanwhile,
down below on the ocean's surface, a low
pressure zone or depression is created.
This triggers a cluster of thunderstorms
creating a tropical disturbance. The
messy unorganized version of a typhoon.
And this is where things become really
impressive or terrifying, but you know
what I mean. Now, as the air rushes in
to fill the low pressure void, the
corololis effect, the force of the
rotation of the Earth, starts to spin
this column of air, creating a giant
feedback loop. More warm, moist air,
more fuel, more thunderstorms. Spiraling
winds accelerate inwards and upwards.
When they hit 62 km/h, you've got
yourself a tropical storm. When they
reach 119 kmh, a distinctive eye will
form. And then things get very scary
indeed. In the Northwest Pacific, you'd
be facing down a typhoon. And in the
South Pacific and Indian Ocean, for some
reason, it stays as a tropical cyclone,
whatever the wind speed. But all of
these are essentially the same thing,
just with different scarier names. And
the Dragon's Triangle is deep in the
heart of Typhoon Alley. More typhoons
form here than anywhere else in the
world. These storm systems can be 480 km
to 640 km wide and 8 to 10 km high. They
tend to be bigger and last longer than
hurricanes, traveling up to 5,000 km and
lasting up to a month. A mature typhoon
can generate around 1.5 trillion watts
of kinetic energy. That's nearly 20% of
the world's total energy generating
capacity. The World Meteorological
Organization estimates nearly 780,000
people have been killed by tropical
cyclones in just the last 50 years
alone. But these storms are not new.
They've been around for centuries. The
kamicazi divine winds that destroyed the
Kubla Khan's invasion fleet in the 13th
century, well, these were most likely
typhoons.
One contemporary account observed that
the destruction of the 1281 invasion
fleet was so utter and complete that, to
quote, "A person could walk across from
one point of land to another on a mass
of wreckage." And there's plenty of
evidence to suggest that the 1957
disappearance of the US AFC97
Strato freighter was also down to a
typhoon. A commercial pilot flying 30
minutes ahead of the C97 observed cloudy
weather, light icing, and light to
moderate turbulence. He also observed
lightning in the sky. And recent
research shows that lightning is more
common in the early phases of yeah, a
tropical cyclone. Back in California,
the desert sun reported the conditions
as winds of near typhoon force. giant
waves hurling spray hundreds of feet
into the air. It quoted a senior Air
Force pilot as saying, "It would have
been damned near impossible to make a
successful ditching attempt under these
conditions. The plane would just break
into pieces in seas like these."
And then there's the MV Darbashir. Its
story is more complex and more tragic
than any mysterious triangle.
The Darbashier's last known message on
the 9th of September 1980 reported a
severe tropical storm. This was Typhoon
Orchid moving in from the east. A
particularly brutal and longlasting
typhoon at 0300 hours Zulu or GMT. The
Darashier reported she was hoved to in a
force 11 storm with 30 ft waves and then
she was gone. After a six-day search,
the ship and all 44 people on board were
declared lost. The only sign of the
Darbashier was an oil slick near her
last known position. It's easy to see
tragedies like this is just facts and
figures in this video, but it's
important to remember these were people
with families and lives. They were just
people doing their jobs. The families of
the crew were anxious for answers, not
because of any mysterious triangle, but
because they wanted to know what
happened to their loved ones. An
unsatisfactory inquest and questions
around the build of the ship meant
controversy rumbled on well into 1994.
Following a strong campaign led by the
Darbasher Families Association, an
expedition was launched to find the
needle in the Pacific haystack. Against
all odds, the wreck was found at a depth
of,280
m using sonar and an ROV. The debris
field stretch an area more than 1,500 m
long. A detailed survey of the wreck was
conducted in two phases. The first in
1997 and the second in 1998 by the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution. The team
used Argo 2, a towed imaging system. And
if that name sounds familiar, it's
because the original Argo vehicle was
used to find and image the Titanic in
1985. Thousands of hours of painstaking
work finally led to the UK government
formally reopening the investigation
into the loss of the Darbashier.
Ultimately, it was concluded that damage
to the bow caused by huge waves led the
holds to fill with water. The Darbashir,
the report states, would certainly not
have been lost had it not encountered
extremely severe seas close to the
center of Typhoon Orchid. The crew were
cleared of any blame and recommendations
were made to increase the safety of
other bulk carriers. This this is why
you need context. And this well this is
why you need science. Understanding how
our oceans work is key to understanding
why ships might disappear. And here in
the Dragon's Triangle, there's one last
factor at play. Currents.
One of the theories often put forward
about disappearances in the Bermuda
Triangle is the role of the Gulf Stream,
a fast-moving and unpredictable current
that could potentially throw sailors off
course. Well, this region in the Pacific
has its own version, the Kurro Shio
current or black current, known for its
dark cobalt blue waters. Early Chinese
marinas called it way or the current to
a world from which no man has ever
returned, which sounds pretty ominous.
Driven by winds and the earth's spin,
the curo shio begins life in the
tropical Philippine Sea, flowing north
of Taiwan. When it reaches Japan, it
collides with a frigid subarctic
countercurren from the Burring Sea and
snakes wildly along the coast until it
shoots east toward North America. Here
it becomes known as the Curio extension.
It's what's known as a boundary current,
a river of water flowing parallel to a
continental coastline. Think of it as
one of the veins and arteries of the
global ocean, moving large amounts of
carbon, nutrients, and heat around our
planet. And this thing moves fast at a
rate of 2.5 m per second. And it's deep,
too, up to a,000 m below sea level, able
to influence weather patterns as far
away as North America. And there's
evidence it's on the move. By analyzing
decades of satellite derived data which
monitors sea surface height and
deploying oceanographic sensors,
scientists have tracked its progress. In
recent years, the northern edge of this
powerful current has shifted up to 480
km to the north, leading to
unprecedented changes in water
temperatures and sea levels. How much of
this is a natural cycle is yet to be
determined. But there's mounting
evidence that the Hadley cell, a
tropical atmospheric circulation
pattern, is expanding due to our old
friend, climate change, which of course
shifts wind patterns. When the winds
move, currents like this one move, too.
And then tropical water start showing up
where historically it wasn't showing up
before. A 2025 study from scientists at
the Japan Meteorological Agency and
Meteorological Research Institutes found
that in the 2023 2024 intensive maritime
heatwave conditions, water temperatures
in places were up to 10° C warmer than
usual. Ocean conditions hugely impacted
fisheries and also contributed to record
heat waves over land. And that's the
thing, this is all connected. the ocean,
our planet, our climate, and we're only
just truly beginning to understand it.
So, who knows what impact these shifting
currents have had on the great storms in
the Dragon's Triangle. The truth is that
yeah, these waters are dangerous. In the
Dragon's Triangle, Devil Sea, Manumi, or
whatever you want to call it, there are
dynamic currents, undersea volcanoes,
and devastating typhoons. You'd need to
keep your wits about you. But is this
fame stretch of water any more dangerous
than any other part of our ocean? Well,
the Dragon's Triangle and the Bermuda
Triangle, for that matter, don't even
make the top 10 most dangerous ocean
regions in the world. But then again, it
all depends on how you categorize
dangerous. Storms, piracy, shipping
accidents, navigational hazards,
dragons. According to Aliens's 2025
shipping and safety review, that was a
tough read, I can assure you. The South
China, Indo-China, Indonesia, and the
Philippines region are the main loss
hotspots.
Four total losses in 2024, 169 in the
past decade, followed by incredibly the
British Isles and the East Mediterranean
and Black Seas. I'll think twice before
swimming to France. Aha, I hear you say,
"But isn't the Philippines region where
the Dragons Triangle is?" Well, yes,
sort of. But those numbers aren't just
for that relatively tiny area, and they
reflect the fact that this is important
and export central. There are huge
volumes of shipping traffic passing
through every day. Look, let's put this
into perspective. During the 1990s, the
global fleet lost 200 plus vessels a
year. This is now down to a record low
of just 27 in 2024.
So, what about planes? Well, air travel
is getting safer, too. Accidents are
extremely rare. There were 40.6
million recorded flights in 2024 and
only seven fatal accidents. And none of
these, by the way, were over the
so-called Dragon's Triangle. Ditching
incidents, that's emergency water
landings, are also far less common than
any other aviation accidents. Typically,
there are only 12 to 15 of these a year,
and statistics show that 90% of these
are survivable. Of course, modern ships
and planes do still disappear without
trace. Just look at flight MH370,
the Boeing 77 that vanished over the
Indian Ocean on route from Koala Lumpa
to Beijing in 2014. Over a decade later,
a new seabed search is currently
underway. A search led by the company
that discovered Sir Ernest Shackleton's
lost ship Endurance in 2022.
Maybe if the plane is found, it will
finally provide answers for the families
of the passengers and the crew. As with
the discovery of the Darbashir, in the
end, mysteries like the Dragon's
Triangle persist because stories help us
process tragedies and turn our fears and
hopes into something that can be shared,
understood, reshaped, and relived. For
instance, in the form of a sea dragon
protecting your homeland from fearsome
invading armies. We live in a thr of the
ocean's power and beauty, and it's
undoubtedly a dynamic engine for the
workings of our planet. We couldn't live
without it. But do we fully understand
it? Not really. But that's what makes it
so intriguing.
A recent review of ocean data suggests
that more than 99.99%
of the global seafloor has never been
seen by humans.
This is visual imaging, i.e. stuff we've
actually seen, not mapping, but it's
still vanishingly small.
The bottom line is that the more we
learn about the ocean, the more we
realize we have yet to learn. So, can
you see how maybe, just maybe, 2,000
plus years ago, in the heyday of Chinese
mythology, an underwater volcanic
eruption might have been mistaken for a
fire breathing dragon. Magic is only
magic until you understand the trick,
after all. And I would argue unpicking
said trick until you understand it hars
its own kind of magic. So, if you
guessed from the beginning that a closer
inspection of the Dragon's Triangle
would debunk it, yeah, you were right.
But remember this. If it weren't for
those stories around strange and
wondrous events, we would have no cause
to investigate them in the first place.
Myths don't just give us thrills and
goosebumps. They inspire curiosity. They
inspire asking questions. And they
inspire science. Let us know in the
comments what you think of these
theories and more importantly of the
Dragon's Triangle. Is it scarier than
the Bermuda Triangle? Are you buying it
at all or did we miss something? I look
forward to reading them all and I'll see
you in the next one.