Who are they - the inhabitants of the Bermuda Triangle in the mysterious Sargasso Sea? The very heart of the giant whirlpool in the middle of the Atlantic is teeming with bizarre organisms, wandering eels, and…plastic debris.
text: Lars Abromeit
Everything is shaking. The steering wheel strives to escape from the hands. The sheets creak, the storm wind howls in the shrouds.
We went to sea on the training sailboat Corvit Kramer three days ago. A day later, the land disappeared from sight. To the very horizon - continuous waves of the Atlantic in foam "caps". Nothing to catch the eye. And there are still eleven days of sailing ahead. Our 41-meter brigantine, which the team affectionately calls "Mother Kramer", despite all the satellite navigators, emergency beacons and life rafts, seems like a helpless tiny sliver.
We are all alone 220 kilometers north of Puerto Rico, right in the middle of an amazing giant whirlpool in the Sargasso Sea. If someone gets sick, if a sail breaks, or if there is a fire, you can only rely on yourself.
The Sargasso Sea has no shores. Its boundaries are not beaches or rocky reefs, but ocean currents. In the west - the Antilles, in the north - the warm Gulf Stream, in the east - the cold Canary Current. It carries water from the depths off the northwestern coast of Africa and south of the Sargasso Sea passes into the North Equatorial Current. Together, these ocean currents twist into a huge spiral that rotates clockwise around Bermuda - the only piece of land within a radius of more than a thousand kilometers. Marine organisms carried by the currents can get stuck in this gigantic whirlpool for years, or even decades.
In the center of the spiral, there is a complete calm for weeks, due to which sailors from sailing ships nicknamed this accursed place "a trap for lost souls." Christopher Columbus was the first to hit it in 1492 during his legendary voyage in search of a western route to India. The languid calm got on his nerves. His companions feared that they were no longer destined to return to Spain.
The famous navigator was the first to describe the unique golden clusters of floating algae with green air bubbles at the ends of the branches. The Portuguese sailors who accompanied him called them "sargasso" - in honor of the small grape variety. It seemed to Columbus that they were in an enchanted place. Dense carpets of algae, birds, a strip of fog and whales clearly indicated the proximity of land. But there was no land. The compass needles danced like crazy, and at night the crew was frightened by a strange glow in the ocean.
Since then, there have been many legends about the Sargasso Sea and the Bermuda Triangle in its western part - with creepy ghost ships, floating islands and "space channels" through which extraterrestrial forces drag ships and planes into another dimension. This area of the Atlantic between 45 and 75 degrees west really holds many secrets. Even for scientists. It is believed that sea turtles have been drifting in circles for years in the tangles of the Sargasso. A bizarre moonfish spawns here, and larvae and juveniles of swordfish, golden mackerel and marlin are unusually common. As well as dozens of species of whales. River eels swim thousands of kilometers from North America and Europe to find a mate in the Sargasso Sea and produce offspring.
Who else lives here? Has our civilization reached these distances? And if so, how did it affect the local ecosystem?
The members of the expedition organized by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Massachusetts, USA) are trying to answer these questions. Goal of a team of 37 specialists: to sail from the eastern border caribbean more than one thousand miles towards Bermuda - and further to New York to study the flora and fauna of the high seas.
In addition, the expedition also has an educational mission. Professor of Oceanography Amy Siuda of the Association for Maritime Education at Woods Hole (USA) took fourteen students with her.
Their task is to study the accumulations of Sargasso with their inhabitants floating on the surface of the sea, as well as particles of garbage.
Ambitious project. Firstly, the area that the expedition members are going to comb in the open sea is comparable in size to the territory of the European Union. Secondly, the Sargasso Sea is fraught with many dangers. There are huge depths here - under the keel of our sailboat, the highest peaks of the Alps would now easily fit. And unpredictable weather, which at one time almost drove Columbus to despair.
But our "Admiral" Amy Siuda is not afraid of the vagaries of the Sargasso Sea. She has been throwing her "net" into it for 17 years.
The guys from the “A” team, after a night watch, fall exhausted into their beds. Ten o'clock in the morning. Among the waves, the first bunches of sargasso are already flashing. It's time for us to work.
Amy Siuda on recent months pregnancy. But this does not prevent her from commanding her students. With the help of a winch, they lower three nets overboard, with which they will trawl the sea: one at a depth of 70 meters, the other at 150 meters, and the third at the very surface. Where the Sargasso drift.
The researchers are bringing dozens of beams aboard. Each of them is a miniature forest in which life is seething. Branches of algae are covered with tiny cnidarians and barnacles. Drifting across the sea in their houseboats, they feed on plankton. Poisonous slugs swarm among the air bubbles on the stems. Their golden coloration is the perfect camouflage. Predatory shrimp smaller than a fingernail search for prey in dense thickets. In one of the bunches, even a Sargasso sea clown hid, tightly clinging to the branches with its pectoral fins. He changes color like a chameleon, explains Siuda. And he hunts from ambush for small fish or his relatives.
More than 140 species of invertebrates and 127 species of fish find food and shelter in the Sargasso. Ten of them, including anglerfish, needlefish, crustaceans, snails and sea anemones, spend their whole lives in them. Others look into the Sargasso in passing. For example, flying fish, twisting "nests" of bubble caviar under their canopy. Large migratory species such as tuna or sailfish come here to hunt. And it is here, as we managed to find out with the help of radio beacons, that sea turtles spend the first years of their lives. Seaweed carpets serve them reliable protection. In addition, the water in the Sargasso is several degrees warmer than in the open sea, which contributes to the growth of reptiles. Birds also visit the floating islands - typhoons, terns and boobies feed and rest in the Sargasso Sea during transatlantic flights.
In the ecosystem of the open sea, sargasso act as "mini-incubators". But about the algae themselves, which about 40 million years ago separated themselves from their coastal relatives and went into free swimming, surprisingly little is known.
There are two types of them: floating sargassum and submerged sargassum. The first has smaller leaf plates, the second has larger ones. But do they differ from each other in the species composition of their inhabitants? And on what routes do they drift across the sea?
“The only reliable source of information about these algae is from the Marine Education Association expeditions,” says Siuda. “For the past 20 years, they have been the only ones who have been making regular observations in the Sargasso Sea.” The conclusion of the participants of these expeditions is unequivocal: two species of Sargassum algae form the same different ecosystems as coniferous and deciduous forests. And they are inhabited by different organisms. Swimming Sargassums seem to have been drifting with the current for years all the way to the straits of the Caribbean Sea. And the submerged slowly move within the southern part of the Sargasso Sea. But why?
"It's hard to say," Siuda replies, unraveling the tangles of seaweed. Scientific data is still insufficient, and it is extremely difficult to collect them.
First hour of the night. The port of St. George in Bermuda is about 500 nautical miles away. The excitement finally stopped. On the sea, only a slight swell.
In the laboratory cabin, plankton researchers evaluate the evening's catch. Siuda is distributing the captured eel larvae to the students, who are to take tissue samples for DNA analysis. Under the microscope, leptocephalic larvae look like ghosts: a completely transparent flattened body, a tiny head with a mouth bristling with sharp teeth. They have so little in common with adult eels that for a long time scientists considered them a separate species.
Our team already has about 300 larvae. Most belong to the conger family - these are conger eels. But there are also several larvae of the river eel among them. For explorers, these are real treasures. Perhaps they will provide clues to one of the biggest mysteries of marine biology: where exactly do European eels come from?
Disputes about this have been going on since antiquity. Fish similar to snakes are born from bottom silt, Aristotle believed. No, they multiply by rubbing against rocks, Pliny the Elder assured. Eels hatch from drops of morning dew, Isaac Walton, author of The Artful Angler, argued authoritatively in the 17th century.
Today, all evidence points to American and European river eels swimming to the Sargasso Sea, where they mate, spawn, and then die. In any case, it was here, south of Bermuda, that the youngest eel larvae were found. But decisive evidence is lacking. They could be eel caviar. Or a photo of a mating pair. Or at least the corpse of an adult eel from the depths of the sea. Any such find would be a sensation.
But for now, biologists have to be content with hypotheses. Presumably, during migration, eels are guided by ocean fronts - the boundaries between two water masses with different temperature, chemical, or dynamic characteristics. And perhaps by magnetic field earth. So they swim more than 6,000 kilometers - from the coast of Europe across the Atlantic. At some point, they find their "half". And their larvae drift along the Gulf Stream back to Europe.
But why such difficulties? So far there is no answer to this question. It is possible that this is just an atavism. Eels may have spawned in the Sargasso Sea region 130 million years ago when the continents were closer friend to friend. Or maybe it's all about the abundance of algae. Flat larvae have plenty of nutritious “sea snow” here - particles of dead algae that stick together with the secretions of planktonic organisms and rise to the surface with air bubbles at night.
All these are just hypotheses, but the example of the eel shows how complex the ecosystem of the open sea is organized. It is permeated with a whole network of migration routes, along which even fragile eel larvae can get alive and healthy from the Sargasso Sea to the rivers of Europe.
Ocean routes depend on natural elements. The Gulf Stream alone pumps every second 150 times more water than all the rivers of the earth combined. Short-term water eddies push cold masses of water saturated with nutrients from the depths to the surface. And in the middle of the Sargasso Sea, blooming oases suddenly appear, where there are almost 100 thousand times more planktonic diatoms than in neighboring water areas. This oceanic "desert" produces every year three times more plant biomass than its equal size Bering Sea, which is considered very "fertile".
But sea currents are not very picky. Along with sargassum, plankton and eel larvae, they carry garbage from our cities into the open sea. Millions of tons of garbage enter the seas every year (see infographic on page 40). Only a small part of it is visible from the Corvit Cramer: plastic bottles, pieces of foam. But on the net it comes across in frightening quantities: up to 200 plastic fragments in half an hour.
Basically it is the so-called "microplastic". Multi-colored particles smaller than five millimeters make up 90 percent of the plastic debris drifting across the oceans.
The spread of microplastics in the oceans is one of the most serious environmental issues modernity, experts say. Microparticles, like magnets, attract and accumulate toxins, carcinogenic chloride compounds and heavy metals. Then they are absorbed by the smallest filter feeders: copepods, planktonic larvae, salps, molluscs and fish fry. And finally, passing through food chain back to people again.
In addition, microplastics carry disease-causing viruses and bacteria through the oceans. What exactly? This is what Siuda is trying to establish together with microbiologist Will Mellvin. Back in 2013, their colleagues were able to prove that more than a thousand species of bacteria live on individual microplastic particles in the Sargasso Sea. Some of these nomadic communities are dominated by bacteria of the genus, a group of microbes that includes cholera pathogens and deadly nerve poison generators. Thus, under the cover of the sea, a completely new ecosystem is formed. Siuda calls it the "plasticosphere".
On the fourteenth day of sailing, a land finally appears on the horizon: Bermuda. But a nine-point storm that has flown in from the north makes us “dance” on the waves for another thirty hours, writhing in bouts of seasickness.
Flaming sunrises, the roar of a storm, endless expanses - the sea does not skimp on grandiose spectacles. But at the end of the voyage, only one prosaic detail remains in the memory: two hundred plastic particles in a small test tube with sea water.
Will the day come when there will be as many garbage patches in the Sargasso Sea as islands of algae? Who will prevent this ecological apocalypse? The Sargasso Sea is outside state borders, and it is very difficult to protect it based on international law. Moreover, even the status of the sea protected area still will not protect it from plastic debris: it is known that sea currents can carry a piece of plastic across the Atlantic in just a few weeks.
In 2010, American scientists tried to assess the possible damage from the "plasticosphere". As they moved east from Bermuda, they recorded up to 26 million microplastic particles per square kilometer - about the same as the concentration of plankton. Scientists have suggested that after a couple of miles this figure may increase.
But they failed to verify their guess: they had too little time, and the sea turned out to be too large.
- warm Gulf Stream in the west,
- North Atlantic in the north
- Canary current - in the east,
- Northern trade winds - in the south.
There is only one such miracle in the world - the Sargasso Sea. This sea has ocean currents instead of shores. From the west and north - the North Atlantic, from the east - the Canary, from the south - the Trade Wind. These currents move clockwise, as if forming a kind of coast.
The sea that everyone has heard of. Read in books about pirates. We read in books about the marine inhabitants of the oceans and seas. The sea among the oceans is called Sargasov. The Sargasso Sea has no landmasses. The coast is unusual. The sea bounded by the waters of the oceans.
Still amazing planet we got it, it has so much interesting places, unique things and exceptions to the rules. We are used to the fact that the sea is limited by shores, but there is such a sea, whose boundaries are outlined by ocean currents. And not a single shore! And the name of this sea is Sargasso.
Sargasso Sea- the only sea in the world that is not limited by land. It is conditionally isolated in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean not far from the American continent.
It is known for many anomalous phenomena and numerous disappearances of ships and aircraft flying over it.
The Sargasso Sea, which is located in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, does not really have its own shores. The depth of the sea is about seven thousand meters. The waters of the sea may seem stagnant, but in fact there is a very slow current, but still it is. Algae has grown at the bottom and the water is very warm.
No matter how strange it may sound, but the sea without coasts is called the Sargasso Sea.
it is this sea-area of the anticyclonic circulation of waters in the Atlantic Ocean.
There is a large garbage patch in this sea.
This is the only sea in the world located in the Atlantic Ocean and has no shores: its borders are formed by currents:
The sea is warm, shallow, almost its entire surface is covered with sargassum algae, which gave the name to the sea.
Calm is almost always observed in this sea, which was a real disaster for sailors paving the way to America on sailing ships.
There is only one known to man a sea without coasts is the Sargasso Sea. It does not have clear sandy or land boundaries, but there are underwater ones that are formed by dense algae. Also, a peculiar border of the sea are four currents that pass around the Sargasso Sea.
There are many legends about the mysterious sea, as it is located Bermuda Triangle.
If you look at the map, the Sargasso Sea is located between the southern part of North America and Africa.
It is quite obvious, in my opinion, that a sea without coasts cannot have clear boundaries. And geographers seem to agree with this point of view, because they say that since the Sargasso Sea is limited not by a strip of land, coasts, but by ocean currents, then it cannot have permanent boundaries, because sea currents also gradually change their direction. But the Sargasso Sea is an eternal clockwise circulation of water in the very middle, as the Americans say, of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is this whirlpool that draws tons of garbage and numerous algae into this zone, although not the entire surface of Lake Sargasso is covered with vegetation.
There is the Sargassum Sea in the Atlantic Ocean - unique not only because almost all of its surface is covered with sargassum algae, but also because it has no shores, but has current borders. And thanks to ocean currents, this sea has a huge garbage patch in itself, to it still collects all sorts of waste thrown into the sea, including plastic bottles and bags. We have completely polluted the planet and it is really terrible.
Text by Pavel Digay
In February of this year, the French yacht "Julia" was in trouble. Having passed the Panama Canal, she was heading from the shores of Central America to the shores of Europe. There were four people on board the yacht: two adults - father and mother, and their two children - a 9-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. Safely passing the Caribbean Sea, passing between Haiti and Cuba, leaving behind the Bahamas, the yacht turned to the northeast. The travelers had no intention of visiting Bermuda, they wanted to go straight to Gibraltar to go to the Mediterranean and in Marseille, at home, to put an end to their round-the-world trip. All was well until thunder struck. Literally. The sky was covered with clouds. From them to the sea stretched lightning. One of them - perhaps because the Julia's hull is made of steel - hit the mast. Fortunately, the lightning rod worked reliably, but the navigational equipment was disabled. And not only the devices themselves, all the wiring turned out to be unusable. The situation, however, did not look dramatic, there are sails, a motor, in the end you can ask for help ... But it turned out that the engine could not be started, damaged batteries did not allow contact with the ground, the emergency buoy also refused to work - and not a breeze. Complete, dead calm! So it was the next day, and a week later, and two weeks later. However, there was no panic on board: there was enough food, although the non-working refrigerator made adjustments to the menu, there was also enough water. It remained to be patient and wait, entertaining yourself with a swim among the Sargasso seaweed. Yes, the yacht and her crew ended up in the middle of the Sargasso Sea, a mysterious place and, as it was believed in past centuries, deadly.
How deadly?
In the Age of the Great geographical discoveries, when Spanish, Portuguese and other sailing ships sailed from the Old World to the New World, they often fell into a calm zone, stretching between 23-35 ° N. sh. and 30-68° W. e. The merciless sun and complete calm for many weeks led to the fact that people lost their minds and even died of hunger and thirst. Indeed, this happened, but for some ship to become completely depopulated for the indicated reason - there is no documentary evidence of this, these are already stories. Another thing is certain: having become prisoners of the Sargasso Sea, the first thing the sailors did was get rid of the horses that were taken to the American colonies. That is why these latitudes were nicknamed "horse" - Horse Latitudes. But sooner or later the wind filled the sails, and the ships continued on their way.
The Julia drifted for eighteen days. Although it seemed that the yacht was frozen in place, in fact it was slowly circling clockwise in a huge whirlpool, which is called the Sargasso merry-go-round. But the wind came, and everything started to move - the people on board smiled, and the yacht headed towards the shore, but towards the one that is closer, to Bermuda. She got there without any incidents to the great joy of the crew, who were burning with impatience to tell the world and journalists about their stay in the very heart of the Sargasso Sea. Their story, however, turned out to be colorful only at the beginning, where there was a thunderstorm, thunder and lightning, but then ... day after day the same thing. Heat, sublimates, swimming, algae - melancholy! Nevertheless, he makes us turn to past examples, and not from glorious times, but relatively recent ones.
In 1894, the schooner Norwood was heading from the United States to Europe. A hurricane swept her south into the Sargasso Sea. Even in the first stormy days, the crew of the schooner left the ship, which gave a leak, and moved to boats, while forgetting about the cabin boy, the cook's assistant named Thomson. Left alone on a ship that had sunk, but kept on the water, Thomson did not give up, but repaired one of the remaining boats, armed it with a mast and a sail, and got out of the trap (and his “comrades” in the crew disappeared into the ocean). As the young man later said, during his journey through the sea, reminiscent of a "green meadow or swamp", he saw an old galleon entangled in algae, an 18-gun brig next to it, and a rusted steamer in the distance. This would have been enough for him, but the subsequent story about the meeting with the sea serpent somewhat undermined the credibility of everything that was said earlier. However…
In 1912, the Italian three-masted sailing ship Herat was also “delivered” by a storm to the Sargasso Sea. For seven months, a hopeless drift in a vicious circle continued. During this time, the sailors saw huge "islands" of algae, from which tree trunks and wrecks of sunken ships protruded. When food and water supplies were almost exhausted, a saving fresh breeze carried the Herat into clear waters.
And before that ... Joshua Slocum - this name is known to every sailor. In 1898, completing trip around the world- the first circumnavigation of the world, accomplished on a yacht under sail alone, Slocum was stuck in the Sargasso Sea for a whole week. 10 years have passed, and in 1909, the captain of the Spray set off on his famous boat from the island of Martha's Vineyard (Massachusetts) to South America. Since then, no one has seen him again. And it seems that his path lay just across the Sargasso Sea ...
And one more thing ... In 1955, the Connemara-4 yacht was discovered in the Sargasso Sea without one person on board. What happened on board remains a mystery.
And finally ... In 2012, the crew of the Russian yacht Scorpius, led by captain Sergei Nizovtsev, tried to set a world record by completing two round-the-world trips without a break in one year - around Antarctica and North Pole. At the point with coordinates 27 degrees 9 minutes s. sh., 64 degrees 50 minutes for s. d., and this is the "roadside" of the Sargasso Sea, the yacht was struck by lightning. All navigational devices failed, except for ... the Russian GLONASS. And the motor was fine too. So our travelers did not have a chance to experience all the horrors of the "Sargasso captivity" - they left! And then the record was set.
So what is it, the Sargasso Sea?
First, about the name. When the ships of Christopher Columbus made their way through these waters, the sailors paid attention to the berries with which the branches of algae were hung, they very much resembled sargazo - the berries of small wild grapes. So they began to call strange algae, and then the sea, which became Sargasso, although, if desired, it can be translated poetically - the Sea of Vines. By the way, in the old days this sea was also called the Ladies' Sea, because, according to the sailors, even the most weak woman. The Ladies' Sea is also beautiful.
It should be noted that the "berries" of algae are not fruits at all, the Sargasso do not have them at all, they reproduce by spores. In fact, this is something like floats filled with air that hold the plant near the surface. Sargasso grow along the coasts of the West Indies and the American continent, where they are not floating, but take root in the bottom soil. Hurricanes tear them up and carry them into the ocean, where they are picked up by currents and collected in the whirlpool of the Sargasso Sea. The stocks of floating algae here are estimated at about 10 million tons.
Let us return, however, to the sea. However, some geographers believe that this section of the World Ocean cannot be called a sea at all. Because it has no shores! To this another - most of geographers objects: the presence of coasts, they say, is not the main sign that academia endows the seas, most importantly - special hydrometeorological conditions, namely, they sharply distinguish these waters from their surroundings. And this is undeniable.
The Sargasso Sea (we will still call it that) is located above the deep part of the Atlantic Ocean - the North American Basin, whose maximum depth is 6995 m. The boundaries of the sea, which has the shape of a giant ellipse, are ocean currents: in the north - the North in the south - the Northern Tradewind, in the west - the Gulf Stream, in the east - the Canary.
It is clear that "liquid coasts" are by definition unstable, so the area of the sea is constantly changing from 8.5 to 4 million km2. Those who have taken the Sargasso Sea into a ring of currents drive their water into it, at the same time making it difficult for its water to go out. That is why the level of the Sargasso Sea is 1-2 meters higher than the surrounding ocean. But this is not the only result. Another is the increased salinity of the water due to the immiscibility of the layers and, for the same reason, its temperature. In the winter months, the water temperature does not fall below +18, and in summer it reaches +28; even at a depth of 400 m, the water is warm - up to +17, while in other areas of the ocean at the same depth the temperature is only +5 °.
The Sargasso Sea is located in a zone of high atmospheric pressure, so it rarely blows here. strong winds. There are few rainfalls. Vapors are strong. Internal currents are weak. As a result, the water is extremely poor in oxygen, and hence in phytoalgae, and hence in zooplankton. That is why the water here is so clear - visibility reaches 60 meters, which is higher than in the Red Sea, which is considered the standard of water purity due to the absence of flowing rivers. But for the same reason, the fauna here is not rich in wealth. But the one that is, is unique!
Sargassums have become a floating home for tiny crustaceans and crabs, shrimps, seahorses... Almost all the inhabitants of the Sargasso community have a body shape and colors that hide them among the algae. Such is the Sargasso clown, whose body looks like a twig of sargassum, he is yellow-brown, and his fins resemble hands with which he “grabs” seaweed. An interesting animal is the traveler crab, known for, which upset the sailors of Columbus: when they saw a Sargasso crab sitting on a branch, they mistakenly decided that the land was somewhere nearby. In ancient times, there were a lot of turtles in the Sargasso Sea, and they even sometimes saved sailors, captivated by calm, from starvation. Of the creatures of a more impressive size, there are dolphins that feed on flying fish, and sharks, but since there are very few people who want to splash among the algae of the Sargasso Sea, there is no data on the tragic meetings of people with sharks. And also - eels! Only a little over a century ago, their secret was discovered - they spawn in the Sargasso Sea, thousands of kilometers from their rivers, and, having given life to a new generation, die in its waters. And that's why they do this long haul still no clear answer.
Truly, the Sargasso Sea is one continuous phenomenon.
But is it worth it to attribute to him what is not, as experts in the field of "paranormal" knowledge do? It is the Sargasso Sea that they consider guilty of all the troubles that happen in the notorious Bermuda Triangle. One of the leading "experts", Australian oceanographer Richard Sylvester, argues that the unhurried "carousel" of the Sargasso Sea gives rise to smaller, but incredibly strong and swift whirlpools that drag ships into the abyss. In turn, the minicyclones, which have arisen due to whirlpools, suck in planes. Such hypotheses are, of course, curious as "mind games", but it is worth listening to other scientists who are concerned that there is more and more plastic garbage in the center of the "carousel", and this is no longer a secret - a problem that needs to be solved.
Win-win plot
The legends surrounding the Sargasso Sea could not but be reflected in literature, and above all adventure literature. Painfully suitable were the "decorations" - broken ships of all sizes and eras, decayed sails, skulls and bones, and treasures that the inhabitants of this incredible world do not need, from which there is no way out alive.
Writers have approached this plot more than once, but hardly anyone will dare to dispute the fact that Alexander Belyaev, known not only for his books Amphibian Man or Air Seller, but also for The Island of Lost Ships, did it best.
The first chapters of the novel were published in The World Pathfinder in 1926. The following year, the publication was completed, and at the same time separate edition. Since then, the novel has been reprinted many times, its total circulation has long exceeded ten million copies. And all because the history of a strange state in the center of the Sargasso Sea, where dozens of abandoned ships pressed against each other, turned out to be excitingly interesting. Plus, the love of the main characters and the attempt on this love by the Governor of the Island. Plus a crime that wasn't there and absolutely positive character, which in fact is the criminal. In general, a complete set of fascinating moves, which are not at all hindered by the class struggle and denunciation of the "animal grin of capitalism."
In 1987, based on the novel, a film of the same name was shot, which turned out to be unsuccessful, despite the presence of the "star" Konstantin Raikin in it. Because the film was performed like a musical, and dances and songs somehow do not fit with real adventures, brutal heroes and flawless beauties.
In 1994, again based on the novel, the film drama Rains in the Ocean was filmed. Few have heard of this film, and even fewer have watched it. And who saw, he will agree: it is for the best. The movie failed.
But the book lives on! And absolutely deserved.
Sargasso Sea- one of the most unknown, mysterious, dramatic but at the same time beautiful seas in the world. And all thanks to the fact that it is literally carpeted with algae.
Mysterious Sargasso Sea
Small larvae hatch from the eggs. They swim to the upper layers of the water, where they are picked up by the Gulf Stream and carried to the northeast. So they swim from two to three years to Europe. Getting to the shores of the mainland, they grow up and become like large eels, only while they remain transparent. A few months in fresh water turns them into the fish we know them to be. After that all life cycle repeats again.
Many more questions remain unanswered. For example, how eels navigate in water, why they need to swim so far to spawn, how larvae find their way to their native rivers, why females live in the fresh water of rivers and lakes, while males remain in the mouths and do not rise high.
Sailors and pilots cannot find an answer to the question of where ships and planes disappear without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle. In many cases, radio communication with ships is suddenly interrupted. Some of these warships were equipped with last word technology. Planes disappeared from radar screens. Subsequent searches turned up no results.
If zoologists can soon find out the secret of eels, then the Bermuda Triangle will excite people for a long time to come. Many hypotheses and sensational discoveries will be due to this mysterious corner of the Sargasso Sea.
If you visit those places, you can also touch these ancient secrets of our planet.
Have a good trip, and most importantly - a safe return)))))
