Benjamin Boster

The Gulf Stream, Florida Current, is a major surface current, primarily driven by a thermohaline circulation that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows through the Straits of Florida into the North Atlantic.

In essence, it is a river within an ocean, and like a river, it can and does carry floating objects.

It has a maximum surface velocity of about 2 meters per second.

A small plane making a water landing or a boat having engine trouble can be carried away from its reported position by the current.

One of the most cited explanations in official inquiries as to the loss of any aircraft or vessel is human error.

Human stubbornness may have caused businessman Harvey Conover to lose his sailing yacht, Revenok, as he sailed into the teeth of a storm south of Florida on January 1, 1958.

Hurricanes are powerful storms which form in tropical waters and have historically cost thousands of lives and caused billions of dollars in damage.

The sinking of Francisco de Bobadilla's Spanish fleet in 1502 was the first recorded instance of a destructive hurricane.

These storms have in the past caused a number of incidents related to the Triangle.

Many Atlantic hurricanes pass through the triangle as they recurve off the eastern seaboard, and before the advent of weather satellites, ships often had little to no warning of a hurricane's approach.

A powerful downdraft of cold air was suspected to be a cause in the sinking of the Pride of Baltimore on the 14th of May, 1986.

The crew of the sunken vessel noted the wind suddenly shifted and increased velocity from 32 km per hour to 97 to 145 km per hour.

A National Hurricane Center satellite specialist, James LaShine, stated, During very unstable weather conditions, the downburst of cold air from aloft can hit the surface like a bomb, exploding outward like a giant squall line of wind and water.

An explanation for some of the disappearances is focused on the presence of large fields of methane hydrates, a form of natural gas, on the continental shelves.

Laboratory experiments carried out in Australia have proven that bubbles can indeed sink a scale model ship by decreasing the density of the water.

and any wreckage would be deposited on the ocean floor or rapidly dispersed by the Gulf Stream.

It has been hypothesized that periodic methane eruptions, sometimes called mud volcanoes, may produce regions of frothy water that are no longer capable of providing adequate buoyancy for ships.

If this were the case, such an area forming around a ship could cause it to sink very rapidly and without warning.

Publications by the USGS describe large stores of undersea hydrates worldwide, including the Blake Ridge area off the coast of the southeastern United States.

However, according to the USGS, no large releases of gas hydrates are believed to have occurred in the Bermuda Triangle for the past 15,000 years.