The 13 Most Mysterious Bodies of Water on Earth
Humans have explored Mars more than some of the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans. Water covers about 71% of our planet, resulting in some mysterious bodies of water with curious properties and sometimes mythological backstories.
Some bodies of water have strange coloring or unexpected chemical compositions, such as the pink Lake Retba. Others, such as Loch Ness, are rumored to harbor mysterious cryptids. Then there are notorious areas such as the Bermuda Triangle where many ships and aircraft have disappeared without a trace.
The following mysterious bodies of water all have something extra going on besides just H2O. How many would you visit? Dive in and find out!
The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, aka the Devil’s Triangle, is a triangular area of the Atlantic Ocean between the following three points: Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico.
More than 50 ships and 20 airplanes — including Flight 19 in 1945 — have disappeared without a trace in this mysterious body of water. Some speculate that UFOs, dimensional portals, or the lost city of Atlantis have caused the disappearances.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that the area is notorious for rapid changes in weather, which often leads to destructive rogue waves. The NOAA dismisses claims that the Bermuda Triangle has more unexplained disappearances than any other well-traveled ocean area, but many remain unconvinced.
Lake Baikal
Russia’s Lake Baikal is the deepest freshwater lake on the planet with a maximum depth of 5,387 feet. The biodiverse lake with crystal-clear water is home to more than 2,500 species of animals, including the freshwater Baikal seal.
The Siberian lake has developed a reputation as a UFO hotspot. Groups of UFO enthusiasts camp out near Lake Baikal and try to find evidence of extraterrestrial activity. According to a news report in The Moscow Times in 2016, numerous citizens reported seeing a slow-moving light over Lake Baikal and posted photos and video footage on social media.
Dead Sea
Image Credit: Hrecheniuk Oleksii/Shutterstock.
The Dead Sea, which borders Jordan and Israel, is one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth. It is so salty that if you swim in it, you will float on the surface with no effort. This large, landlocked salt lake gets its name because few animals or plants can survive in a body of water with such high salinity.
Sometimes, after periods of heavy rain, portions of the Dead Sea or little lakes adjacent to it will turn blood red due to algae, iron oxide, and other chemicals. According to the Bible, the Dead Sea also swallowed up ancient cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah.
Devil’s Kettle
Image Credit: Shutterstock.
The Devil’s Kettle is a waterfall and rock formation in Judge C. R. Magney State Park in Minnesota. The waterfall splits into two falls: the east side pours into a typical pool, and the west side falls into a seemingly bottomless hole in the base of the rock that never fills up. Perhaps the Devil is filling up a kettle, thus its name.
In 2017, hydrologists discovered that the water from the west side of the falls does not lead to some civilization in a hollow Earth or to the Devil’s kitchen. The water actually travels underground for a bit before rejoining the stream below the waterfall.
Lake Natron
Tanzania’s Lake Natron is not only extremely salty, its unusually alkaline water has a pH nearly as high as ammonia. The microorganisms that survive in this water turn it pink. The lake is a breeding area for lesser flamingos, who get their signature plumage by eating the pink algae in the water.
When birds, bats, and other animals die and fall into Lake Natron, they are calcified and turn to stone as if they looked into the eyes of Medusa. Photographer Nick Brandt has collected numerous calcified specimens and posed them for his eerie photos.
Loch Ness
Loch Ness is large freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands infamous for being the purported home of Nessie, an aquatic cryptid also known as the Loch Ness Monster.
Although the famous 1934 photo of Nessie’s serpentine neck and head emerging from the water turned out to be a hoax, numerous people have reported, photographed, and filmed unidentified creatures swimming in the lake.
Cryptozoology enthusiasts want Nessie to be a plesiosaur that escaped extinction millions of years ago, but a DNA study conducted in 2019 showed a high amount of eel DNA. What people call Nessie is probably just one of many giant eels that swim through the murky lake that reaches a depth of 755 feet.
Okanagan Lake
Okanagan Lake is the largest of five interconnected freshwater lakes in British Columbia. The fjord lake is 84 miles long.
What makes Okanagan Lake mysterious is the presence of a purported lake monster named Ogopogo. Canada’s answer to Nessie is said to be a long, serpentine beast with several humps and a head like a horse or snake — your typical sea dragon. A member of the Westbank First Nation describes Ogopogo not as a monster, but “the sacred spirit of the lake” that protects it from one valley end to the other.
Great Blue Hole
The Great Blue Hole is a large marine sinkhole off the coast of Belize in the Caribbean. Although the portions of the Great Blue Hole closer to the surface teem with sea turtles, sharks, coral, and other forms of marine life, things get stranger deeper down.
Scientists discovered that there is a layer of toxic hydrogen sulfide stretched across the hole at a certain depth. Below this point, no oxygen penetrates and most animals cannot survive. In addition to finding trash and the shells of dead animals at the bottom of the Great Blue Hole, explorers have have recovered the bodies of two divers who must have ventured too deep into the mysterious sinkhole.
Black Sea
The Black Sea is an inland sea situated between Europe and Asia. The body of water is less salty than ocean water, which means that, despite its ominous name, the Black Sea is devoid of jellyfish, stinging anemones, man-eating sharks, and other dangerous oceanic animals.
What makes the Black Sea mysterious is that the water near the bottom is low in oxygen, which helps preserve ancient shipwrecks and artifacts in a sort of aquatic time capsule. According to National Geographic, one shipwreck named Eregli E located off the coast of Turkey is 2,500 years old, and it’s not the only one.
Lake Vostok
Located in Antarctica, Lake Vostok is one of the least-explored lakes on the planet, which adds to its mystery. At about the size of Lake Ontario, Lake Vostok is the largest subglacial lake in the world.
Scientists estimate that the ice sheet covering Lake Vostok has existed for perhaps 15 million years. Isolated from the rest of the planet for millennia, any organisms living in this nutrient-starved body of water may be unlike any other on Earth. NASA has taken interest in developing a robotic probe to take biological samples of Lake Vostok because, if life exists there, something similar might have developed in a lake covered with ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Lake Nyos
Lake Nyos is a crater lake located in Cameroon, Africa. Although the deep lake is located near the flank of an inactive volcano, a pocket of magma sits underneath the lake and emits carbon dioxide into the water.
The lake is notorious because, in 1986, a burst of carbon dioxide rose from the depths of Lake Nyos, killing 1,746 people and more than 3,000 livestock animals. This prompted the creation of the International Working Group on Crater Lakes (IWGCL) a year later to prevent this kind of natural disaster from claiming human lives again.
Lake Retba
Lake Retba is a pink-colored lake located in Senegal, West Africa. Dunaliella salina algae causes the pink water of the highly saline lake.
Locals depend on ecotourists curious about seeing the pink lake for their livelihood. In 2022, flooding caused by torrential rains devastated the area. The floods washed away the salt mounds worth about $696,000 and tourist businesses lining the shores, as well as (hopefully) temporarily eliminating Lake Retba’s signature pink color.
Shanay-timpishka
Shanay-timpishka, also known as La Bomba or the Boiling River, is a tributary of the Amazon River located in Peru. Heated by geothermal activity underneath, a four-mile stretch of Shanay-timpishka has an average water temperature of 186 degrees Fahrenheit.
There are other boiling bodies of water across the world, but most of them are near active volcanoes. Shanay-timpishka is mysterious because there are no active volcanoes nearby, so the stretch of water catches animals off guard. The shores of Shanay-timpishka are carpeted with the bodies of unsuspecting animals who were boiled alive.
