In August 1492, Columbus's fleet inadvertently broke into a magical sea. From a distance, the sea is like the grasslands of the New World, showing a vibrant greenery. However, as the ship approached, everyone felt creepy. It was found that this was not land at all, but a sea with a large amount of seaweed.
Columbus, realizing that something was wrong, immediately directed the crew to withdraw from the sea, who knew that their oars were so entangled in this strange seaweed that they could hardly move. In this way, Columbus's fleet was trapped in this sea for three weeks, and it took great effort to finally escape.
This mysterious sea is known as the "sea grave" by many navigators, and it is also one of the "world's top ten unsolved mysteries".
The Sargasso Sea is located near the famous Bermuda Triangle, where the transparency of the sea is 66 meters, and in some areas it is as high as 72 meters. From above, the clear and transparent water is as calm as a mirror. Some people once put film negatives into the sea when the weather is good, even if it reaches more than 1,000 meters deep film can still sense light, which shows the clarity of its sea water.
The water here is dark blue and very clear, in some places nearly 7,000 meters deep, and the sea surface is covered with sticky brown algae, like a huge carpet. These brown algae are called sargassum, hence the name of the sea. A thick web of seaweeds up to several kilometers long covers the surface of the water, bringing life to a large number of organisms and protecting them.
These organisms include small invertebrates, fish and jellyfish, turtles, shrimp and crabs. Deep in the ocean floor there are other species of seagrass and plants. A large group of creatures live in the darkness, like a forest in the night.
In the mouth of many navigators, sargassum is a terrible creature, and all ships passing through the Sargasso Sea will be captured by Sargasso. The crew's lives will be gradually consumed, and only the bones and the wreckage of the ship will be left. This seemingly calm and beautiful sea has thus become a frightening forbidden land.
Until the great development of modern civilization and science and technology, oceanographers and meteorologists launched various surveys of the Sargasso Sea, and the Sargasso Sea unveiled its mystery layer by layer. It turned out that the "real culprit" that trapped the ship here was not sargassum, but ocean currents.
The Sargasso Sea is uniquely located in the eastern United States at the center of the North Atlantic circulation, about 2,000 nautical miles long and 1,000 nautical miles wide. It is a sea without land boundaries, surrounded by four powerful currents. To the west is the life-giving Gulf of Mexico Warm Current, to the north is its tributary, the North Atlantic Current, to the east is the Canary Current, and to the south is the North Equatorial Warm Current.
The sargasso sea of more than 5 million square kilometers is like a warm and slow whirlpool swirling in a circle enclosed by currents. Any ship that enters this area of the sea will find it difficult to continue to move forward, and can only circle in place. #打开眼界 #
