4 Most Bizarre Discoveries in the Deep Sea | Unveiled

4 Most Bizarre Discoveries in The Deep Sea

The surface of our planet is mostly covered in water, and yet there’s still so much we don’t know about what’s below. A majority of the seafloor remains unexplored and there are likely countless undiscovered lifeforms swimming in the depths. Technology has allowed researchers to finally dive into the dark, however. Into high pressure environments to see what lies below, and they’ve made some very strange discoveries along the way.

This is Unveiled and today we’re taking an extraordinary look at 4 of the most bizarre discoveries in the deep sea.

With billions of years worth of life, and thousands of years worth of human artifacts, the Earth sure holds a lot of secrets. Even today, we’re still discovering new species of plant and animal, as the diversity of this planet continues to astound. In the years 2014 and 2015, 381 new species were discovered in the Amazon rainforest alone! And, speaking of the Amazon, in 2022, researchers announced that they had used digital mapping to uncover the ruins of urban settlements previously hidden in the jungle. We took a closer look in another recent video, so be sure to check that out after this. In short, there is still plenty for scientists to uncover on land. But, still, the oceans remain even more mysterious. We know that the seafloor holds so many secrets, but these are some of the strangest ocean oddities that we’ve found so far…

Built in 1903, the RMS Republic, nicknamed “The Millionaire’s Ship,” was considered unsinkable. In 1909 however, three years before the Titanic left port, the Republic was struck by another ship and promptly sank beneath the waves. At the time, it was the largest ship to ever have sunk. A distress call sent out using newly invented wireless telegraph technology allowed the crew and passengers to escape, but the ship itself plummeted to the bottom of the ocean.

The wreck lay there undisturbed for 70 years until, in 1981, the treasure hunter Captain Martin Bayerle finally found it on the seafloor, 50 miles south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. This might not seem too bizarre, but the treasure it carried is where it gets interesting. At the time of its sinking, the ship was reportedly loaded with a wealth of valuables. That included a quarter of a million gold coins for the US Navy, thousands of dollars for the survivors of an earthquake in Italy, a fortune in personal jewelry, and a five-ton shipment of American Gold Eagle coins worth $3 million dollars. And that’s their worth at 1909 standards… in today’s money, we’re talking a lot more. Altogether the estimated fortune exceeds one billion dollars in today’s economy, with some people valuing its goods at a whopping seven billion, total.

And yet, it largely remains unclaimed. We know (or suspect) that it’s there, but no one has ever actually gotten their hands on it. A few problems present themselves for aspiring treasure hunters heading for the Republic. As the ship was considered unsinkable, it’s fair to say that it’s a sturdy structure. Not only is the cargo likely to have moved around on the ship, then, but actually getting to it would involve excavating thousands of tons worth of ship deck. Really, you’d have to know precisely where the gold was (a near impossibility) in order to reach it. Although, despite the issues, wreck-finder Martin Bayerle reportedly remains committed to retrieving the treasure… one day.

But it’s not just ships that are difficult to salvage from the bottom of the ocean. That’s also true for the giant spine that was purportedly spotted at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea. In 2017 an unnamed worker from an oil and gas company was operating a remotely controlled underwater vehicle in order to photograph sections of the seafloor when he captured footage of something extraordinary. Having done this job for many years, he was familiar with the types of creatures in the area and their anatomy. But he couldn’t explain what marine animal would leave a spine that measured around 30 meters (98 feet) in length.

The first thing that came to mind was, unsurprisingly, some kind of whale… but that also doesn’t seem likely because it was missing a skull, and whales have large and heavy skulls that are altogether unlikely to go missing. Plus, the spine didn’t match to what would usually be expected. Whales have three blades on their vertebrae, whereas the snaking spine at the bottom of the Med only has two. Scientists, oceanographers, biologists… anyone and everyone was stumped.

After ‘paranormal investigator’ Deborah Hatswell shared the footage on youtube, no one could reliably say what it was. Despite its serpentine look it’s been deemed probably not an oarfish, considering the fact that this skeleton was some four times larger than the biggest oarfish ever found. What’s more, when the unnamed worker tried to interact with the skeleton by picking it up, it crumbled into dust… meaning it might’ve also been ancient. Given its enormous size and its placement in the Mediterranean, there was naturally one direction that the story took, in the minds of some. This unusual find brings to mind the many legends of giant sea serpents that sailors so often wrote about in the past. Could this be the skeleton of one such ancient monster or dinosaur? So far the footage has yet to be examined by a professional, but the intrigue has grown and grown.

Some underwater formations, on the other hand, have been meticulously studied by professionals - like the Yonaguni Monument. The Yonaguni Monument is a certainly strange underwater rock structure discovered by a diver in 1986 next to Yonaguni Island in Japan. It’s famous because marine geologist Masaaki Kimura, along with several pseudoarchaeology writers, claims that it was manmade. Kimura argues that the area as a whole is up to 3,000 years old… and that, in its entirety, the monument includes detailed structures like pyramids, roads, and even a stadium. He believes it could actually be the lost continent of Mu, often identified alongside and even paired with Atlantis.

There’s little doubt that at first glance this is a spectacular place. There are sections where the rocks are shaped in such a way that they even seem to resemble staircases... and it isn’t too difficult to imagine a time when people might’ve walked them. Other geologists, however, believe that the Yonaguni formations have a different and more grounded explanation; that they’re really the result of natural processes. The parallel lines are said to be common features of bedding planes, created when sediment is laid out in distinct layers over time… and the criss-crossing lines that can also be seen could be natural fractures that have formed due to earthquakes in the region. The supposed “markings” in the area (that some claim may have also been manmade) are really just random-but-natural scratches in the rock. Notably, Yonaguni skeptics include the Japanese government, which doesn’t recognize the monument as an important landmark.

But finally, perhaps one of the most bizarre discoveries ever made at the bottom of the ocean is so strange precisely because it’s one of the last things you would expect to find on the seafloor. Fields of metal balls have been spotted in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. They’re a global sight, then, and can sometimes cover 70% of any given portion of the seafloor. Called Manganese Nodules, the structures are thought to form when metal ore gradually collects around a core, such as a rock or fossil. Again, they perhaps look as though they should be artificial… but actually they’re not.

Oceans are littered with the formations, which can be as small as pebbles or as large as bowling balls. It’s thought that the nodules grow extremely slowly, and as little as one centimeter in one million years. But there are two major mysteries surrounding the balls. For one, they only seem to exist on the seafloor and not buried below it, but that’s odd because there should be many that get naturally buried over time. For another, their rate of growth really is astonishingly slow. Even the slowest sedimentation rate that scientists know about is ten times faster than these manganese nodules. Animals and ocean currents could be playing a part in their mysteries, but no one really knows why there are so many of them out there. There have been attempts to mine these fields to extract nickel from the nodules… although those attempts have also been criticized by environmental groups.

Overall, the bottom of the ocean is one of the most mysterious places on Earth. What’s your verdict? What’s the greatest ocean mystery you know of? In addition to a majority of it never having even been seen, there are a lot of fascinating things that have been found in the areas of the sea that we have set eyes on. On top of those featured in this video, divers and explorers have discovered train graveyards, ancient Greek computing devices, engines from the Apollo space missions, and even underwater rivers. Most of these can be explained, however, and so perhaps aren’t quite as bizarre as the objects that people still can’t fully describe.

Looking ahead, there are undoubtedly many more mysteries to be found. Quite apart from anything else, there’s likely an enormous amount of undiscovered life down there… as well as long-buried artifacts waiting to be unearthed in the deepest depths. Until then, those are four of the most bizarre discoveries in the deep sea.