All language subtitles for Weird.Or.What.S01E02.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG

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♪
and may contain
mature subject matter.

You know what?

I've been around for a while.

I've traveled the world,

met some interesting people,
done some crazy things.

So, you might just think

there's not much that
could take me by surprise.

You'd be wrong!

The world is full of stories
and science and things

that amaze and confound
me every single day,

incredible mysteries
that keep me awake at night.

Some I can answer.

Others just defy logic...

like, from the depths
of the Pacific Ocean,

one of the loudest

and most mysterious
sounds ever heard.

What made it?

Or the residents of a Texas town

who report mysterious lights
in the night sky,

UFOs that have the U.S.
Air Force in hot pursuit.

What's going on?

And the fishing trawler
that disappears,

only to be found undamaged
at the bottom of the Pacific.

Why?

Yup, it's a weird world.

And I love it.

1997.

Something emerges
from the deep that has

confounded science ever since.

One of the loudest and scariest
sounds ever recorded.

Weird, or what?

You know, in the 21st century,
we might be forgiven

for thinking that there's
no mystery left on planet earth.

If you did think that,

you'd be wrong.

We may have Google-mapped,
Facebooked and Twittered

every square inch
of land we walk on,

but below sea level,

it's a very different story.

We know more about
the depths of the cosmos

than we do about
the depths of the Pacific.

This story starts
during the Cold War,

when the U.S. Navy implemented

a sophisticated
underwater listening grid

to monitor
Soviet submarine activity

around the world.

But by 1991, the
superpower standoff has ended.

They contact
oceanographer Christopher Fox

and offer him
and his team the opportunity

to use the system
for environmental research.

Christopher Fox:
There was an effort
in the United States

to see if we could take
military systems

and use them
for environmental science.

William Shatner:
Fox and his team would utilize

the Navy's network
of underwater microphones,

known as hydrophones,

that over the years were placed
around the world's oceans

in their hundreds.

For the first time,
scientists had the means

to listen in to massive areas
of the deep sea.

They might wish
they'd just left it alone.

Christopher Fox:
We began hearing whales.

Of course, we heard
shipping and man-made sounds.

William Shatner:
But there, amongst the
many sounds of the ocean,

was something
he had never heard before...

a sound both
mysterious and chilling.

We heard it,
and then we probably

played it back several times
because it was very unusual.

William Shatner:
Fox's colleague,
geologist Robert Dziak,

was also puzzled
by what he heard.

Robert Dziak:
To me,
the most impressive part

about the sound
is how loud it was,

uh, by our,
by human standards.

William Shatner:
How loud?

What about
a whopping 180 decibels,

louder than a supertanker

and one of the loudest
sounds ever recorded?

So loud, it was picked up
by two hydrophones

over 3,000 miles apart.

Its location was determined
to be 50 degrees south,

100 degrees west,
just north of Antarctica.

This monstrous
and thoroughly weird sound

was nicknamed "The Bloop."

Is that weird, or what?

There's no denying
that the Bloop is a very,

very weird sound,

but the thing that has
most perplexed scientists

is that after
that day in 1997,

the sound was
never heard again.

Ever since,

debate as to the origins of this
mysterious emission has raged.

Was it geological?

A secret military test?

Or was it biological?

Some kind of very shy
beast of the deep?

Christopher Fox:
I think it's exciting to think

that there are things
going on in the ocean

that we don't know
what they are.

William Shatner:
So, if the sound is biological,
it kind of begs the question --

what on earth,
or underwater,

produces a sound this loud?

To produce a sound
of this volume,

the animal
would have to be enormous.

Blue whales
are the largest creatures

that have ever
existed on earth,

reaching over 100' in length

and weighing
an estimated 400,000 lb.

They communicate in volumes
as loud as 185 decibels.

David Mellinger
is a marine biologist.

He has analyzed
the one-time acoustic event

to see if the Bloop matches
with any known biological sound,

like a blue whale.

Blue whales are extremely loud;
there's no doubt about that.

Something you can hear at tens
or maybe hundreds of miles away

has got to be really loud.

See, I could
put them side by side.

Here's the blue whale sound...

(Blue whale singing)

and this one here
is the Bloop sound.

(Low sound playing)

Blue whales, even though
they're the loudest animal

we know in the ocean

for a continuous,
sustained sound,

they're nowhere near
as loud as the Bloop sound.

We can hear the Bloop sound
for thousands of miles.

The animal would
have to be gargantuan

if it were
a biological sound.

William Shatner:
To find out what produced
the mysterious sound,

scientists had to consider
a seemingly impossible

and ever so slightly
scary prospect,

that blue whales are not the
largest creatures in our oceans.

Could there be
something else down there?

Christopher Fox:
It would be
something completely unknown,

and it would
probably have to be huge,

and you'd have to say,

"How could something that huge
be totally unknown on earth?"

Philip S. Lobel:
It really is hard to say

what kind of creature
could it possibly be.

There's no question --

we don't know what's
at the bottom of the ocean.

The Pacific Ocean is so vast,

it hurts my brain
to even think about it.

Here's a body of water covering
30% of the earth's surface,

reaching depths
of over six miles.

Think about it.

Anything could be
happening down there.

So, if the Bloop wasn't created
by a known marine animal,

what about an unknown one?

Could we be dealing
with some kind of sea monster,

a remnant of pre-history?

Is it a kraken?

Or a salt-water cousin
of the Loch Ness monster?

Sounds crazy, right?

Actually it's not
as far-fetched as you think.

In 1938,

a coelacanth was caught
off the coast of South Africa.

They were believed
to have been extinct

since the end
of the Cretaceous period,

over 65 million years ago.

And in 2006,

the remains of
a previously unknown

prehistoric marine creature
was discovered,

labeled 'Predator X.'

The creature was 49' long

and would have
weighed 99,000 lb.

Yikes!

So, is it possible

that one of these
is still swimming around?

It's possible there's
some creature out there that's--

that we haven't found yet.

I'm skeptical of that idea

because I think we would have
fished one up in a net by now.

Philip S. Lobel:
What makes it questionable

as to whether
it's a biological sound

was it was
only recorded once.

William Shatner:
Okay, if the Bloop
didn't come from a sea monster,

then what else?

In their search for answers,
the scientists have pondered

another seemingly
far out possibility.

Could, somehow,

the earth itself
have made this incredible sound?

.

William Shatner:
Experts are trying
to uncover the origins

of a mysterious sound

that came from deep within
the Pacific Ocean.

They suspect
it wasn't made by an animal.

So, another theory emerges.

Could it have been produced
by something geological?

After all, there's a lot of
weird stuff going on out there.

The outermost layer
of our planet,

the lithosphere,
is divided into tectonic plates.

Every year,
massive underwater earthquakes

and volcanic eruptions
occur along their boundaries

beneath the oceans,
and guess what?

They produce
massive sound waves.

This is the sound
of a resonating volcano,

and it's all
very low energy here.

It's almost like a little
white/yellow band there.

Again, here's an example
of an earthquake,

and it's all
low-frequency energy.

But when the sounds
of an earthquake and a volcano

are compared to the Bloop,

there is
one important difference.

Robert Dziak:
What's different
about the Bloop

is that it's at a much
higher frequency range,

you know, much higher pitch
than these natural sounds,

and, typically, earthquakes
are really low frequency rumbles

that sound like thunder,

and icebergs, they also
kind of sound like thunder,

but they have
kind of harmonious tones.

This is a different pitch,
higher pitch, like an animal,

sort of like
what an animal would make.

William Shatner:
Could it be a more anomalous
geological sound?

The Bloop was recorded
near Antarctica.

Perhaps that could be
a clue to its origins.

After all,
with global warming,

incidents of ice splitting

have been increasing
in the Antarctic region.

Robert Dziak:
We see really bizarre sounds
coming out of Antarctica

that are caused
by the interaction

of these giant icebergs
coming off of the mainland.

We see the sounds
of ice cracking.

We call them ice quakes.

That's very distinctive too.

William Shatner:
Icebergs breaking can be
as loud as 193 decibels,

as deafening as the Bloop.

Robert Dziak:
Icebergs can be as big as,
you know, some big land mass.

They can be 10 miles wide,
and they can make ice quakes

that are comparable
in size to earthquakes.

This one is the sound
of an iceberg tremor.

The iceberg's moving
along the sea floor,

scraping along the sea floor,

causes the iceberg to resonate
and makes a harmonic sound.

William Shatner:
But so far,
none of the recordings

have captured
a similar sound frequency

to that of the Bloop.

So, if the Bloop
isn't biological

and it's not geological,

could it be possible
that the Bloop is man-made?

That would explain
why we only heard it once.

Now, who would
have the resources

to make such a loud sound
in the middle of the ocean?

Hmm.

Are you thinking
what I'm thinking?

In 2000, many believe
that secret Navy sonar tests

were responsible
when dozens of whales

beached themselves
in the Bahamas.

It is estimated that the
Navy's secret sonar transmitters

can generate sound
as loud as 215 decibels.

Could the Bloop have been this
or another secret military test?

They were putting devices
and instruments in the water,

testing underwater explosions,

doing underwater experiments
of various kinds.

I don't necessarily believe
in conspiracy theories.

I think there's probably
a reasonable explanation

for all the sounds
we observe in the ocean.

William Shatner:
Despite the numerous theories,

no one has proven what caused
this mysterious sound.

But scientists are still hoping
it will be heard again.

Philip S. Lobel:
Will we hear it again?

You know,
will the sound reveal

some new mystery
of the ocean?

Maybe, but, for now,

the Bloop remains...

weird, or what?

William Shatner:
It's a scene straight out of
a Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.

The inhabitants of a Texas town
witness the night's sky

set ablaze by colourful UFOs,

seemingly in a dogfight
with U.S. Air Force F-16s.

Was this mass sighting
really as weird

as an authentic
alien visitation?

Right,
let's get to work.

It's time to delve into the
cutting edge of military tech

and separate hard fact
from science fiction.

.

We humans have always
looked to the sky

for either our salvation
or our doom.

Whether looking for
our great guardian angel

or the terrifying invasion
of a violent alien race,

we look up for our end.

Well, this is the true story
of what happened when,

one night,

the entire population
of a small Texas town

looked upward as one
and were left thinking...

"Is that weird, or what?"

January 8th, 2008.

The sleepy dairy town
of Stephenville, Texas.

Looks nice, doesn't it?

Another peaceful evening
for Erath County police officer

Lee Roy Gaitan
and amateur pilot

Steve Allen
is suddenly destroyed

by a close encounter
of the first kind.

Lee Roy Gaitan:
When I got out of my car,
I saw this bright,

bright light, um...

appeared to be changing colours.

Steve Allen:
It was real close, like,

1500' in the air
and about 1500' over from us,

and whatever it was
didn't make any noise at all.

It was totally silent.

Everyone in the community
has accepted

that there was
something strange happening

the night of January 8, 2008,
in Erath County.

William Shatner:
The mysterious light show
was witnessed by many others

and by morning,

the whole county is
reporting spooky UFO sightings.

You know, you'd always see
the UFO shows on TV and, um,

I really didn't believe in UFOs.

I mean,
I always thought

there was
a legitimate explanation.

Steve Allen:
I feel like these are
from somewhere besides earth.

I don't think
they're from earth.

It was almost
like a biblical event.

We couldn't come to
a conclusion of what it was.

William Shatner:
But for Steve Allen,

the mysterious lights
were just the half of it.

He thinks the UFOs were
joined in the sky that night

by a far more
familiar-looking aircraft.

Steve Allen:
We went into the house
to figure out what happened,

and somebody called
and says they're coming back,

and we ran outside,

and that's when we saw
the two F-16s in pursuit.

And I thought,

"Well, why is our government
chasing something,

you know,
or what are we doing?"

You know,
"Are we at war with somebody?"

Or it could be end times,

or a lot of things
passed through my mind.

And you know,
I kind of made a beeline,

after that, to my house,
'cause I thought,

if there was a problem
or something happening,

I wanted to be
at my own home with my family.

So, what are we
dealing with here?

Well, this clearly
isn't one of those stories

we hear about all the time,

where some lone crank
experiences an alien visitation,

probably gets abducted
and yaddi, yaddi, yadda.

No, what we have here is just--

It's much more interesting.

A UFO sighting
shared by dozens,

if not hundreds
of level-headed Texans.

You can find them.

So, could so many people

see something
at the same time

and all believe it
to be a UFO

and it not be the truth?

Cognitive neuroscientist
professor Allison Sekuler

specializes in
researching how the human brain

interprets everyday events.

She believes there may be
a more down to earth explanation

for the mystery
of the Texas lights.

Allison Sekuler:
Officially,

UFO stands for
Unidentified Flying Object.

People don't like
"unidentified."

The brain doesn't like
"unidentified."

The brain's job
is to make sense of the world.

William Shatner:
You see, to Professor Sekuler,
eyewitness statements,

especially those of mysterious
and hard to explain phenomena

are often
innocent misinterpretations.

Allison Sekuler:
Different people can look
at exactly the same thing

out in the real world and see
completely different things

because the way that
you see the world

is not actually a reflection
of what's physically out there.

It's a reflection
of how that information

interacts with your brain.

And so, because my brain has
different sorts of perspectives

on the world
and different experiences,

I'll interpret
something differently

than someone
standing next to me

who's had a different
sort of life experience

and a different perspective
on what they're looking at.

William Shatner:
So, apparently,
when faced with something new,

the brain will look for answers

by trying to match
what we're seeing

with something similar
from our previous experience,

memory
and cultural background.

And of course,
in the United States,

seeing strange lights in the sky
can only mean one thing.

Movies can have a big impact

on the way that we think about
and see the world.

So, if there hadn't been

a whole flurry of UFO movies
in recent history,

it'd be less likely
that all these people

would have said,
"Ah, it's a UFO."

I'm not saying
I saw a UFO,

but with all the reports
from everybody else,

apparently,
that's what I saw.

Okay, so,
when it comes to finding

a rational answer
for something weird,

we humans might just
form a consensus that's based,

subconsciously,
on what we've seen in movies

or read in comic books
when we were kids.

So, given the right light,

angle and conditions,

someone seeing
an innocent Frisbee

flying through the air

might process it as
something altogether different.

So, whatever the people
of Stephenville saw that night

may not have been
an alien spacecraft,

but the fact remains,
they saw something,

something very weird.

What was it?

James McGaha:
There is no evidence

that the earth
has been visited in the past

or is being visited today
by extraterrestrial aliens,

no evidence whatsoever.

William Shatner:
James McGaha
is a retired Air Force pilot

and a complete skeptic
about alien visitation.

What a spoilsport.

As far as he's concerned,
he knows exactly

how to explain
the mysterious lights.

They were military flares.

This is Stephenville right here.

Here's where the aircraft
were flying that night.

At the exact time
they were saying

they saw lights in the sky,

there were eight F-16s
in the area, flying maneuvers,

both with after-burners,
which produce lights,

with their
formation lights on,

and they were
dropping flares.

William Shatner:
Now, you see,
flares are used by the Air Force

to solve two different yet
equally important problems.

One, there are
ground illumination flares.

These flares are
dropped from aircraft

in order to light up
an area on the ground

several miles wide.

The flares are suspended
in the air by a parachute.

The heat from the flare
helps to keep it aloft.

Two, there are
countermeasure flares.

This kind is used
to confuse enemy missiles

targeted onto aircraft.

The heat of these flares

is hotter than the heat
from the afterburner,

causing heat-seeking missiles
to lock onto and track the flare

instead of the military jet.

Huh, interesting.

The aircraft were
manoeuvring all around.

The flares were being dropped.

So, there was
lights and everything.

It would be
very difficult for someone,

unless they knew exactly what
the military manoeuvres were,

to actually understand
who was chasing what.

Okay,
I've got to admit,

flares being dropped from F-16s
in war-game exercises

seems like a plausible

explanation
for the Stephenville lights,

but for some,

this theory
just doesn't add up.

Could the US government
be covering up the truth?

.

William Shatner:
In a mass
"Weird Or What" moment,

hundreds of eyewitnesses
report UFOs in the skies

above Stephenville, Texas,

being chased
by US Air force F-16s.

Can this be true?

What really happened?

Steve Allen
is a private pilot.

He saw the lights

and isn't convinced
they were simply military flares

dropped by US fighter jets.

Lights we saw travelled
at a high rate of speed,

all the way
from the east to the west,

and come back by
with jets chasing it

and only, like,
1500' off the ground.

So, yeah, what we saw
was definitely not a flare.

It was quite spectacular.

They was on the
same height and trajectory.

You know,
they was following it

or attempting
to keep up with it.

You could see
the full after-burner

coming out the back
of the F-16s.

Probably, you know,

I would say they was
running in excess

of 500 or 600 miles an hour,
themselves.

William Shatner:
Allen's belief
that the lights

were UFOs actually being
chased by fighter jets

is supported by one
crucial piece of information.

If these were simply flares,

why didn't
the Air Force admit it?

Steve Allen:
Carswell Air Force base
and the military in Fort Worth

originally denied
anything out here,

and then they denied
that F-16s was there.

And of course,
they was from here,

no further than
two football fields away.

So, we know they was there.

Later on,
as I discovered,

there were indeed aircraft
flying that night,

and the Air Force,
the public affairs office,

put out a press release,
saying we made a mistake.

There was nothing more to it,

no, nothing sinister
at all to it,

just a mistake.

Hmm.

So, U.S. Air Force claims
there was no military activity

in the skies above Stephenville
on the night in question

but then mysteriously change
their minds a few days later?

Sounds suspicious,
doesn't it?

Remember what happened
at Roswell?

After first saying they had
captured an alien ship,

the military then
changed their tune,

denied everything,

and the conspiracy theorists
have reveled in it ever since.

I'm getting paranoid here.

Are you paranoid,

or is it just me?

Why are you looking at me?

Why are you
looking at me?

This is military communications
expert Steve Douglass.

He believes
the Stephenville lights

were indeed Air Force flares,

but they were being used
as part of a military cover-up,

not to hide
the existence of aliens

but something far scarier --

to hide top-secret black ops.

Whoa.

Steven Douglass:
Well, as it goes with the
Stephenville sightings,

I think the truth is
that a lot of people were seeing

what they think are
extraterrestrial spaceships.

They're not.

They're seeing
military projects.

I'm basically
what you would call

a black project researcher.

I'm one of those guys
who gets in a lawn chair

and sits out
on a mountaintop,

looking over a base
that doesn't exist,

hoping to see the odd
secret spacecraft, airplane,

whatever new widget
the military is using.

William Shatner:
One of these "secret widgets"

currently flies
over Afghanistan --

the RQ-170 Sentinel,

otherwise known
as "The Beast of Kandahar."

Steven Douglass:
Because of guys sighting it
and taking pictures of it,

the Air Force
came clean and said,

"Yes, we have
this thing flying,

and it's
a surveillance platform."

William Shatner:
A stealth drone
with no metal parts,

completely undetectable
by enemy radar

that's entire existence
was denied by the U.S. military

until December 2009 --

scary but cool.

Just this year alone,

the new military budget
is at $108 billion

with 44 billion of it

earmarked for
covert operations alone.

William Shatner:
Douglass also believes

the Air Force may have another
still top secret

piece of surveillance hardware
cruising high in the skies,

not over
a far away combat theater

but right here,

right now,
over the United States.

We call it the stealth blimp,

and it flies
at very high altitude --

200,000' or 300,000'.

You don't know it's up there,

and it can do everything
from listen to look to see.

It's the ultimate
flying Big Brother,

is what
a stealth blimp could be.

You know, there could be one
listening to us right now.

William Shatner:
According to Douglass,

it was a malfunctioning
stealth blimp

that was to blame
for what happened

in the skies above Stephenville
on January 8, 2008.

Well, as it goes with
the Stephenville sightings,

I think it was
a combination of two events.

I think it was some type of
covert black projects operation,

maybe, like,
one of these stealth blimps

was forced down in altitude.

Because of it happening,

which I think
was just a happenstance,

the military put on
what I call a dog and pony show,

which means they threw
a bunch of fighters in the area,

dropped some flares,
made some lights,

asking you
to kind of look over here

but not at
that thing over there.

William Shatner:
So, were the mysterious lights
over Stephenville that night

simple flares used
to distract attention

from a black op gone wrong?

Or were the flares being used
in a routine exercise?

Or were the good people
of Erath County,

like Steve Allen

and the police officer,
Lee Roy Gaitan,

right all along?

Could the origins
of the Stephenville lights

be from another world?

Perhaps, but for now,
the mystery remains

weird, or what?

Northern California.

The Coast Guard launches
a desperate search

for a fishing boat

that has mysteriously
vanished without a trace.

They find nothing.

It's the third
unexplained disappearance

on this stretch of coastline
in less than a year.

Does America's
Pacific Seaboard

have a new
Bermuda Triangle?

It's time
to uncover the truth.

.

Old mariners' tales
of the perilous ocean

swallowing ships
and whole crews are legend.

But in the 21st century,

when several vessels fitted with
high-tech communication systems

vanish without a trace

on the same stretch
of American coastline,

is that just weird, or what?

September 20th, 2004.

Humboldt Bay, California.

Here, one of the main employers
is commercial fishing,

an industry that ranks among
the U.S.'s deadliest professions

with a fatality rate
five times higher

than that of police officers
or firefighters.

A 46' fishing vessel,
called the Marian Ann,

crewed by Bill Burchell,

John Mogg and Maurice Alvarado,

sets off on a routine
three-day fishing trip.

Their first stop is scheduled
for Eureka, California,

the following morning,
just a few miles up the coast.

But the Marian Ann...

never arrives.

Jennifer Mogg:
They were expected in
to deliver fish at 6:00,

September 21,
in the morning.

Suzie Howser:
I showed up there,
and the boat wasn't there.

They were never late, ever,
ever, ever, ever.

I instantly
started freaking out.

It's pretty rare

for a commercial fishing boat
to be reported overdue.

William Shatner:
Fearing the worst,
the Coast Guard,

commanded by search-and-rescue
controller Jim Egbert,

springs into action.

Coast Guard, Humboldt Bay.

What is your emergency?

We issued an urgent
marine information broadcast,

asking for information,

to see if anybody's seen them,
heard from them.

William Shatner:
But no one has.

Time 6:30 a.m., local.

The Coast Guard issued a report
of fishing vessel Marian Ann --

40' fishing vessel
overdue on a voyage from Eureka.

All vessels in the area

are requested to keep
a sharp lookout,

assist if possible

and report any sign of distress
to the Coast Guard.

William Shatner:
Puzzled by the mysterious fact
the crew of the Marian Ann

had not sent a distress signal,
the Coast Guard heads

straight to the boat's
last known location.

Man: This is the
United States Coast Guard,

Humboldt Bay, California.

Jim Egbert:
Usually, there's
some kind of, you know,

a call from the boat,
an activation of EPIRB.

The boat carried a NOAA vessel
monitoring system transponder

and was able to find
the last position

where they had
stopped transmitting.

William Shatner:
The last time the boat
logged its position

was at 7:22 p.m.,

just 20 miles off the coast.

Jim Egbert:
My level of apprehension
was pretty high,

so we went right to searching
for them immediately.

William Shatner:
But what they do find

offers little hope
of finding them alive.

Jennifer Mogg:
They found the life raft

and a couple of buoys

and an ice chest.

But unfortunately
weren't able to find the vessel

or any of the survivors

or the crew members.

William Shatner:
After two days,
the search is called off.

The Marian Ann and its crew
have vanished,

seemingly into thin air,
just weeks after one crewmember,

Maurice Alvarado,

has told his mother
it was time

to leave his
dangerous job behind.

Phyllis Sovereign:
He says, "You know, mom,

I think it's time
that I get off the boat."

I said, "Why?"
and he says,

"Well, I need to spend
more time with my children."

And, like, three weeks later,
he was gone.

There's just no way to explain.

You just can't believe
that they're not coming home.

So, what could have
caused the Marian Ann,

a 46' boat,
to vanish in normal weather

so quickly the crew
didn't have time

to send a distress signal?

For San Francisco Coast Guard

senior investigator
Ross Wheatley,

the disappearance
of the Marian Ann

is the latest incident
in a much bigger mystery.

There is more to the story,
in this particular case,

because this was
the third vessel sinking

in a relatively
short period of time.

June 21st, 2004.

The Relentless,
a 50' fishing trawler,

vanishes with all hands.

Also in 2004,
the Gina Lisa went missing.

It was later found
in 4,000 feet of water,

sitting upright
at the bottom of the ocean.

Like the Marian Ann,

both cases were
off the California coast.

The weather was fine.

No distress signals were sent.

Something weird...

is happening on the coastline
of Northern California,

but what?

Here at the Stevens Institute,

the Center for Maritime Systems
in New Jersey,

Dr. Alan Blumberg
and his team of researchers

are looking
for an explanation.

This facility tests marine
hydrodynamic properties in boats

using two large water tanks.

Today, they are going to
test an incredible theory,

a destructive phenomena

long thought to be
a mariner's myth --

rogue waves.

A rogue wave typically
would be characterized

as an unusual wave
of very large amplitude --

for example, 100' high --

and they cause a lot of damage
when they impact your vessel.

William Shatner:
Rogue waves are thought to occur

when fast currents
and strong winds

focus smaller waves together

into one big,
devastating wall of water.

In the lab,

the team has made a model
to simulate the Marian Ann.

Mike Morabito:
We're gonna put this model
out in the tank,

and we're gonna run
some large waves at it.

William Shatner:
Using a sophisticated
wave-making machine,

they are attempting to simulate

the conditions created
by giant rogue waves.

Mike Morabito:
Well, we're basically
testing what would happen

if a large rogue wave
came up on this vessel.

William Shatner:
The results
are simple and dramatic.

It takes only a few waves

to overwhelm the model.

Mike Morabito:
When you see it sinking,

you see what that
time scale is gonna be.

It's gonna be pretty quick.

William Shatner:
If surprised
by a rogue wave,

the Marian Ann
could have sunk in seconds

with no time to send
a distress signal.

It seems a plausible theory,

but without finding the boat,
it's impossible to prove.

But refusing to give up,

the Coast Guard are about to
make an astonishing discovery.

.

William Shatner:
A fishing trawler has vanished

off the coast
of Northern California.

After a search yields nothing,

the Coast Guard asks
the US military for help.

Ross Wheatley:
The Coast Guard
contacted the Navy.

They came up and conducted

what they call a side scan
sonar search of the bottom

in the general area
in which

the fishing vessel
was believed to have sank.

They developed, basically,
a 20 square mile box,

in which they forecasted

that the vessel most likely
would sink if it actually sank

at the time that
they stopped broadcasting.

They searched
that 20-mile square box

for basically three days.

William Shatner:
After an
exhausting sonar search,

the boat is finally found,

2100' underwater.

Equipped with
an underwater camera,

the Navy sends down
the submersible,

and what they discover

is shocking.

The ship is perfectly intact,

with no signs of damage.

Ross Wheatley:
The vessel is sitting upright
on the bottom.

There's no clear indication
of any type of a collision.

Unfortunately,
after viewing the video,

it basically didn't help us
determine the actual cause

of what's caused
the vessel to sink.

William Shatner:
This disturbing
discovery creates

more questions than answers.

What could be powerful enough

to sink a ship in seconds

yet leave no damage?

To solve this mystery,

investigators need more clues.

They go back to the video.

Upon closer examination,
it is revealed

that the Marian Ann's nets
were almost fully retracted.

Ross Wheatley:
We were able
to locate the fishing net.

It's, for the most part,
hauled up on the wheel.

William Shatner:
Investigators theorize
that because the nets were up,

the boat was loaded with fish

and may have become unstable.

Ross Wheatley:
One of the issues that
we've seen in other vessels,

or other casualties,

is sometimes the question
of whether or not

the product onboard,

if it's not
properly segregated,

can shift as the vessel
deals with the weather

and that can
cause stability issues.

William Shatner:
To keep a boat stable,

distributing the catch evenly
in the cargo hold is vital.

Unbalanced,
a vessel can roll too far

and rapidly take on water.

If this happened
to the Marian Ann,

it might explain why
no distress signal was sent

and why there was little
visible damage to the ship.

Investigators
closely examine the video

to see if this was the reason
why the boat sunk.

In this particular case,

we weren't able
to see inside the fish hold,

so we couldn't make
any type of determination.

William Shatner:
Due to the extreme depth,

the divers are unable to
examine the inside of the boat.

The investigation
hits another dead end.

But now a bizarre
new theory has emerged.

Could the Marian Ann
have been sunk by volatile,

highly destructive
methane gas bubbles?

In 1985,
a cameraman captured

extraordinary footage
of a drilling platform

in the North Sea
being destabilized

by methane gas bubbles
from the ocean floor.

Dr. David Vaccari believes

this could also
have theoretically

overwhelmed the Marian Ann.

Methane is formed
in the sediments

by biological processes.

Bacteria,
in the absence of oxygen,

will undergo
a fermentation process

and produce the methane.

William Shatner:
Methane hydrates are found
in oceans all over the world,

buried beneath the ocean floor.

They release methane bubbles
when exposed to warming seas

or underwater earthquakes.

If a swarm of small bubbles
rose under the ship,

it would decrease the density
of the water

the ship was floating in.

The ship would then
settle down into the water,

possibly enough
to cause it to swamp

by water coming over
the side of the ship directly.

William Shatner:
To test this theory,
researchers placed a boat

in the water
and laid a system of pipes

on the seabed beneath it.

Air pumped through the pipes
simulates methane gas,

creating thousands of bubbles

that float to the surface
with dramatic results.

David Vaccari:
It's possible for bubbles
to sink a ship.

Is it likely?

That, I would need more evidence
to support the likelihood.

Despite six years
of investigation,

theories and speculation,

the definitive cause of the
Marian Ann's tragic sinking

has yet to be resolved.

With no answer in sight,

the US Coast Guard
has finally closed the case,

saying the boat sank
from causes unknown.

But in Humboldt Bay,

the boat and its crew
have not been forgotten.

Jennifer Mogg:
It's not that distant.

It's still very new and fresh

and still a very big mystery

and, um, no closure.

Still have no idea
what happened.

William Shatner:
So, for now,
this is one mystery

that cannot be explained.

Boats are sinking,
and nobody knows why.

Is that weird, or what?

So, there we have it --

three strange
and mysterious stories

but each with many plausible
theories to explain them.

What did the good people
of Stephenville, Texas,

see in the skies that night?

Were the mysterious lights
really military flares

dropped from fighter jets,

or were they spacecraft
from another world?

Why did the Marian Ann

end up at the bottom
of the Pacific Ocean?

Was it overwhelmed
by a rogue wave?

Was it sunk by methane bubbles?

And what could explain
the spooky and mysterious sound

that rose from the depths
of the Pacific Ocean?

Was it an earthquake?

A volcano?

Was it man-made,
or do huge,

unseen creatures
lurk in the deep?

Join me next time
for three more stories

that will undoubtedly be...

weird, or what?