Crew Sails Over Erupting Volcano. What Happens Next Is Earth Shattering.
What’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever seen in the ocean? Maybe a group of surfacing whales? The fabled green flash? Maybe you’ve heard other people talking about harrowing stories of real-life sea monsters (giant squid are scary, okay?). We can almost bet that you haven’t seen a volcano, though.
But then there’s the crew of the Maiken, a yacht that set sail in the South Pacific in 2006 and saw something that literally no one else had encountered before, a journey that sometimes felt more like a fairy tale than the real world – and led to an amazing, documented discovery that you’ll have to see to believe.
A Strange Mass Appears in the Waves
The crew and passengers of the yacht Maiken first noticed these odd streaks in the water. It was clearly not land, and nothing that they had expected to see on that particular trip. Ordinarily this would be an odd illusion from a cloud, a sudden bloom of algae in the water, or possibly an unusual gathering of other marine life (maybe even an oil spill or trash). All of these could reasonably be expected in the vibrant South Pacific sea. However, the Maiken was about to stumble onto something far stranger and less common.
The Yacht Draws Closer
The Maiken approached the strange disturbance cautiously. The yacht was not an exploration vessel and didn’t have scientific equipment to study the ocean, but the crew was still curious enough to take a closer look.
Something Seems Off
A Swedish sailor Fredrick Fransson, who had spent a lot of time in these waters, had noticed something else eerie: The water in this area of Tonga was always a rich blue hue. Now, however, the water was turning a disquieting green color, more like a lagoon than the open ocean.
Land Ho? …No
The more the crew studied the event, the less sense it seemed to make – at least at first. It looked like land – actually, specifically, it looked like a sudden beach or desert suddenly appearing out of the ocean, which was impossible.