The Wreck in Witch's Hole: the sole casualty of Britain's Bermuda Triangle
September 10, 2012 7:13 PM Subscribe
To a fisherman, all areas of the sea have names, just as a farmer will name his fields or streets have formal and informal names.
For instance, there is the Witch's Ground, an area where the fishing is good, but the bottom is very rough and gear can easily be damaged or lost. Or if you're really unlucky,
an undersea methane burst might make water less dense, and the sea could swallow your whole trawler.
Witch's Hole, a large pockmark in Witch Ground, in the North Sea to the north-east of Scotland, has been surveyed a few times in decades past. It was thought that the spike in the middle of the pockmark was a gas plume, possibly methane.
A remotely operated vehicle was sent down to record video of what was in the pockmark (Google books preview), capturing images of a wrecked ship. Robert Prescott and Mark Lawrence of the Scottish Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of St. Andrews identified the wreck as an early 20th century steel-built steam trawler, which
raises the prospect that methane gas emissions in our shallow seas can have catastrophic effects upon ships.
The Savage Planet episode "Britain's Bermuda Triangle" isn't summarized or available online, so whatever findings the Scottish Institute of Maritime Studies revealed about the wreck are unclear. Alan Judd, a marine geologist from the University of Sunderland, was also involved in the survey and review of wreck. While he isn't certain a methane bubble was responsible for the wreck, he stated "
the boat didn't go in either end first, it went down flat.... For a boat to have randomly landed within Witch's Hole would be an amazing coincidence. Although it is 100 metres across, it represents a tiny target in the whole of Witch Ground."
posted by odinsdream at 7:19 PM on September 10, 2012 [2 favorites]