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Chapter 1: What is the Dragon's Triangle and how does it compare to the Bermuda Triangle?
Most of us have heard of the Bermuda Triangle. It's the stuff of legends and rumour 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 recognised 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 galleon, but a modern bulk carrier. Nearly 45 meters wide and 300 meters 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 fire-breathing 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 Kublai 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 fire-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 Astrum Earth. Join me for this voyage into the most deadly part of the Pacific Ocean.
We'll explore undersea volcanoes, tackle ocean gyres, 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.
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Chapter 2: What historical events have contributed to the Dragon's Triangle's reputation?
There was no May Day distress call. The Derbyshire 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 Derbyshire. 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 Berlitz. Now, Berlitz 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.
Balit 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 Kaiomaru No. 5 had been sent out to investigate some of those disappearances.
Fortunately for every conspiracist, there's also a skeptic. Hi. Larry Cush spent his career doggedly debunking Berlitz's theories, fact-checking them with real, actual facts. What a great guy, wish we could get him on the channel.
Cush's 1975 book The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved and his follow-up research also dived into the Dragon's Triangle, concluding that Berlitz'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. Astrome Earth, 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 paths 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 mod cons, how early sailors found their way anywhere, quite frankly. Compasses going awry is another popular theory when it comes to these triangles.
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Chapter 3: What modern scientific investigations have been conducted in the Dragon's Triangle?
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 kilometer horseshoe shaped 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 of thousands of tons of seawater.
In 2009, an expedition filmed the West Mata volcano erupting an incredible 1200 meters beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean in an area between Samoa, Fiji and Ponga.
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 1200 degrees Celsius. 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 incident? No, check this out. This blew my mind. It's estimated that approximately three quarters 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 basaltic balloons, essentially gas-filled bubbles of lava, and they create pumice 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, I wish my online presence could sometimes disappear into a digital dragon's triangle, so I could avoid the mountain of spam emails I'm getting right now.
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