What Created These Mysterious Underwater ‘Crop Circles’?

By: | June 13th, 2014

Man have no doubt explored many secrets of Earth, touched Moon, reached other planets however still there are number of unexplored places in this living planet.

Oceans are still the most mysterious parts of the world

As per the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, less than 5% of the world’s oceans have been explored. There are many places in all the oceans where strange and mysterious phenomena occur.

Deep-sea photographer and diver Yoji Ookata, while on a dive near Amami Oshima at the southern tip of the Japan, discovered mysterious underwater crop circles. He had never encountered anything like that before in his 50 years experience of studying the underwater world. He found beautiful rippling geometric sand patterns nearly six feet in diameter which was about 80 feet below sea level.

The secret behind this “mystery circle”

Yoji Ookata, his colleagues and a television crew from the nature program NHK unlocked the mystery. They discovered a small puffer fish was responsible for the design. They found the fish, which is hardly a few inches in length, swims tirelessly day and night to form these vast patterns to attract a female fish to deposit her eggs in the protected center.

These grooves basically act as a natural buffer to ocean currents for protecting the delicate offspring.  Scientists also discovered, more ridges the sculpture contains, more females it is bound to attract.

Nidhi Goyal

Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

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