Original subtitles

narrator: Tonight on "The Bermuda Triangle:

Into Cursed Waters"...

how did an entire fleet of pirate ships

suddenly disappear?

- From a distance, had the shape of--could be a coffin.

[dramatic music]

narrator: Did they fall prey to an awesome

and mysterious phenomenon,

massive whirlpools?

Are they responsible for other disappearances

in the Bermuda Triangle?

- Stories about little kids fishing in boats and getting

pulled into the whirlpool and stuff.

Anything that falls in is not getting out.

narrator: For the first time in history,

a dive to the bottom of a huge ocean sinkhole

in search of answers.

- Right about 10 m--whoa! Whoa! - Whoa!

- And we're the first ones to see it.

♪ ♪

narrator: There is a place

that evokes fear and fascination.

Bounded by Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico,

the Bermuda Triangle has swallowed countless ships,

planes, and people.

But why?

♪ ♪

Now an elite team dives in.

- These are dangerous dives.

- Any sane person would not be doing this.

narrator: Their secret weapon, a map, decades in the making,

which pinpoints unidentified wrecks.

- There's all these shipwrecks out there

in the Bermuda Triangle that there's no names to.

- Dive, dive, dive.

narrator: Their mission:

solve the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle

one wreck at a time.

- Mother Nature is gonna take these wrecks away,

and these mysteries are never gonna be solved.

The clock is ticking.

♪ ♪

narrator: In their ongoing mission

to solve the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle,

deep sea divers Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are heading out to investigate a new target

called Red Snapper Sink.

- I've known about Red Snapper Sink for many years.

It's always been on the back burner

just because of the logistics to get out there

to do a long dive, because we're thinking potentially

this is gonna be 500 feet or deeper.

♪ ♪

And no one's been to the bottom of this sinkhole.

No one's documented the true depth.

I mean, I got to get out there and get to the bottom of it.

♪ ♪

narrator: Red Snapper Sink, near the Bermuda Triangle,

is one of the targets on Barnette's map of wrecks.

It's a mid-ocean sinkhole, also called blue holes.

Hundreds may be in this part of the ocean.

These holes can reach depths of more than 600 feet

and feature unexplored cave systems.

- We do a lot of cave diving,

but this is a kind of a unique situation.

We're gonna go dive Red Snapper Sink,

which is about 30 nautical miles

off St. Augustine, Florida.

It's unique because it's the only big sinkhole

on the Atlantic coast of Florida.

I mean, It's an anomaly.

♪ ♪

narrator: Red Snapper Sink and its caves

may be more than an oddity.

It may also be a killer.

- One of the most curious stories

coming out of this area off St. Augustine

in Red Snapper Sink

is the disappearance of a slew of ships

back in the 17th century.

And of course, this area was also

a hotbed of pirate activity.

narrator: In 1684, a fleet of six ships

under the command of English pirate Thomas Jingle

were preparing for a daring raid

on the Spanish port of St. Augustine.

- So we have a raiding force of six ships on their way

to hit St. Augustine.

Five of them disappear without a trace.

Again, another incredible mystery

in this part of the Bermuda Triangle.

- The disappearance of Jingle's fleet, you know,

has baffled people for over three centuries.

In that time, nobody has found a single trace

of any of those missing ships.

Now, that's strange.

narrator: Some accounts blamed the disappearance

of Jingle's ships on a freak storm.

But mariners have long told tales

that the pirates actually fell prey

to a fabled and deadly phenomenon:

ship-sucking whirlpools.

When currents moving in opposite directions

on a large body of water collide,

they merge and flow in a circular formation.

If there is a pit or hole beneath the flow

that's deep enough, it can create a powerful vortex

that spins inward and down like water circling a drain.

- They will make whirlpools when the tide changes,

and it sucks the water in there.

And it can be very dangerous. There's, you know,

there's stories about little kids fishing in boats

and getting pulled into the whirlpool and stuff.

narrator: If whirlpools do form around Red Snapper

and other ocean sinkholes, are they powerful enough

to swallow a ship, accounting for some

of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances?

♪ ♪

If that's the case, the team could find evidence

of Jingle's fleet at the bottom.

There are other stories of pirates and mariners

dumping coffins into Red Snapper Sink.

♪ ♪

- It's not really clear when these burials you see happen.

Spanish settlers, the English settlers, we don't know.

Anything that falls in here is gonna be lost.

It's almost like a tar pit, right?

Anything that falls in is not getting out.

We don't really know what to expect.

- We don't know what could be down there.

Could be treasure. We talked about pirates.

I mean, who knows?

That could be a cover-up for them dumping

who knows what down there.

♪ ♪

narrator: As far as the team knows,

no diver has ever been to the bottom of Red Snapper Sink.

Its estimated depth is 400 feet beneath the ocean floor.

Few divers in the world have the experience

to even attempt it, let alone survive.

Safety is paramount and requires a surface team

just as experienced as the divers.

- There's got to be somebody up here that

can think the same way they do, somebody on board

who could run the dive deck, who understands

the way these divers are gonna be thinking

at 300, 350, 400 feet.

- By the time they get in the water, we'll be

like one tap... [indistinct]

- On a dive of this depth, we are talking about

our body being under 15, 16, 17 atmospheres of pressure,

so 17 times more pressure than is on our bodies right now.

110 feet right here, 350 where he is.

The line is straight up and down, vertical.

- All right, I guess we'll start gearing up then.

narrator: Recreational scuba divers use tanks

that contain oxygen and nitrogen.

But for a dive this extreme, normal air can be lethal.

- For the depth that we're expecting to reach

the bottom of Red Snapper Sink, potentially 500 feet,

we can't just breathe regular air because

the increased pressure makes oxygen toxic.

narrator: Under that same pressure,

nitrogen also becomes narcotic.

- It's like being drunk, but in a very severe way.

So we have to use exotic gases like helium

to displace both of those

to have a safe breathing medium,

an atmosphere that you can breathe safely.

narrator: This helium mixture

is safe to breathe at extreme depths.

But it brings other challenges.

♪ ♪

- The problem about having helium is, it

alters your voice, and you sound like Donald Duck,

so it's impractical to use comms.

So we just have to rely on hand signals,

light signals, and just deal with everything in the water.

narrator: At a depth of 90 feet,

the divers reach the known sea floor.

Then suddenly, they see Red Snapper Sink

staring back at them.

♪ ♪

- Even with the limited visibility we had,

you can see a portion of it,

you can just see the curvature.

So it has pretty sizable dimension.

♪ ♪

narrator: As the divers continue their descent,

they know the clock is ticking.

Even with the trimix system,

they will only be able to spend 15 minutes

at the bottom of the sinkhole before narcosis

once again becomes a risk.

♪ ♪

Finally, 380 feet down,

Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

become the first known divers in history

to reach the bottom of Red Snapper Sink.

♪ ♪

And the 15 minute clock starts.

♪ ♪

As the divers begin to explore this alien new world,

the divers immediately notice something unusual.

- A lot of the sinkholes, all the places we've been,

on the bottom, there's no oxygen on them

and usually no life on the bottom at all.

Whereas, here, we had fish all around us.

narrator: With their bottom time quickly winding down,

they continue to scan the sinkhole floor.

Mike Barnette suddenly spots something.

- And from a distance, I saw this.

I was like, "What is that?"

Had the shape of a-- could be a coffin.

Straight edges, it looks man-made.

♪ ♪

- They were all different sizes,

which was kind of weird.

It wasn't consistent from one to another.

- Some of them were 20 feet, maybe like 8 meters in length,

and probably a good 6 feet, 2 meters, in width.

Some were laying flat,

some were piled on top of each other.

narrator: The objects look to be made of stone,

which would negate the coffin theory.

But could they be remnants of Thomas Jingle's

doomed pirate fleet or their cargo?

♪ ♪

Answers will have to wait.

Time's up.

The team needs to start their slow ascent to the surface

before the crushing impacts of this depth

start to take effect.

- We dive caves a lot. We see big boulders and stuff.

But flat, straight edges, almost like 90 degree angles,

like it's been carved out, that's really unique.

narrator: Wreck divers Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

are beginning a slow ascent after becoming

the first divers to touch the base of what was thought

to be a bottomless mid-ocean pit near the Bermuda Triangle.

Red Snapper Sink is also believed

to be the resting place

of Captain Thomas Jingle's pirate fleet.

Five ships in this fleet vanished in 1684.

The team wants to know why.

- Jimmy. - What's up?

- All right, man, yeah. - It was awesome. Good dive.

- So what do you think?

- A little different than what we expected.

- Yeah.

- It looked like man-made structure at the bottom.

Looked--it's definitely something man-made.

[dramatic music]

You're not going to get straight edges like that

from natural bottom.

- I think we need to show the footage to the team

and get them together and back on shore,

and see what they think of what caused this.

What--what are these structures?

♪ ♪

narrator: Back on land, Barnette and Gadomski

meet up with two of the other core members of the team,

historian David O'Keefe and investigator Wayne Abbott,

to review the footage from Red Snapper Sink.

- This is basically the top of it.

You have the sand from 90 down to 132.

- Wow, goes quick, doesn't it? - Yeah, it's pretty steep.

narrator: They're especially interested

in the rectangular stones

and whether they have a connection

to Jingle's lost pirate fleet.

♪ ♪

- Oh, my.

♪ ♪

- Look at that.

- So this is the stone here. - Yeah, yeah.

Look at the straight edge right up to the top.

- There's a flat surface too. - It is not natural.

That is man-made.

- We see it in the distance.

Like, is this the coffin that you hear these stories about?

Then we got closer, and no, it's--it's rock.

- So theories, thoughts?

I mean, is it something from a ship, possibly ballast?

♪ ♪

narrator: Ballast stones could be an important clue.

- So before the 20th century, ships like Jingle's

would use large rocks and stones as ballast

to stabilize their vessels, especially in rough seas.

So ships that had heavier cargo rode lower in the water

and were more stable.

Now, a ship with less cargo needed

the ballast stones to lower its center of gravity.

narrator: By analyzing a ballast pile's formation

and geological properties, archaeologists have been able

to date shipwrecks going back to ancient times,

their approximate size,

and even where they came from.

♪ ♪

Could these man-made slabs have served a similar purpose?

And could they have belonged

to Thomas Jingle's lost pirate fleet?

Or has the team found something

even more mysterious?

- Obviously, if you want to hide secrets,

this is a great place to put your secrets.

So we don't know.

But figuratively and literally,

we want to get to the bottom of this.

narrator: The team splits up to follow the trail.

♪ ♪

Mike and Jimmy will prepare for a second dive

on Red Snapper Sink.

♪ ♪

Meanwhile, Wayne and David head to the Bahamas

and the site of the Bermuda Triangle's

deepest known ocean sinkhole...

♪ ♪

Dean's Blue Hole.

They're looking for evidence that these holes in the ocean

produce whirlpools strong enough

to pull down ships like Captain Jingle's.

- We have an extraordinary opportunity

to literally go where, really, no one

has truly explored before.

- Yeah, I mean, this is the first time that anybody--

as far as we know--is putting an ROV down and actually

go to the bottom of Dean's Blue Hole

and see what's down there.

- It's super heavy, so two hands and watch your back.

- On top? - Sure, yeah.

- Oh, good morning, boys.

- Hello. - Hey. Hey, guys.

narrator: For this mission, the team has called in

marine biologist Thomas Iliffe,

an expert on Dean's Blue Hole,

and underwater photographer Evan Kovacs.

The plan is to use a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV,

to get to the bottom of Dean's to see if there are any ships

that have been pulled down.

- From up on the top of the cliff here,

we can see right down into the blue hole.

- This is spectacular.

♪ ♪

So basically what we're seeing right now

is just the tiny little opening.

- And bigger and bigger... - Wow.

- And bigger and bigger the further you go down.

- So essentially, it's a vertical cave.

- Absolutely.

- You know, we've heard stories about ships

potentially disappearing out of nowhere...

- Sure. - On the surface.

Could it be something like this

that could be doing something like that?

- I wouldn't be surprised.

I've seen one other blue hole that has a whirlpool in it.

And down at the bottom, 100 feet deep, is a sailboat,

and it's all broken up.

narrator: It's the first corroborating account

of a blue hole pulling down a boat, and not the only one.

In one reported incident from 1948,

a fisherman named Joe Talley was in the Bermuda Triangle

near Andros Island in the Bahamas,

when his 65 foot fishing vessel

suddenly broke down due to a mysterious electrical problem.

A ship called the "Caicos" came to tow Talley in.

But as Talley laid down to rest,

his boat was suddenly pulled 40 feet

below the water's surface.

Fortunately, the "Caicos" crew spotted Talley in the water

and were able to pull him to safety.

♪ ♪

- It's way closer to shore than I thought.

- Oh, yeah, it's just right--

a few feet out.

- Is there a possibility then that there

could be others like this somewhere

in the Bermuda Triangle area?

- Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure there are.

So looking around, they can be a long way from shore.

Until people go out and explore, we don't know.

- Okay, what's the plan then?

- So this ROV, it's basically a camera

with lights and thrusters.

So we have a very small, thin, lightweight fiber optic

copper cable to get us down there.

So she should be good to 1,000 feet or so.

narrator: If Dean's Blue Hole is 660 feet deep,

as most suspect,

the ROV should have plenty of cable to reach the bottom.

- Yes. There it is. - There it is again.

narrator: Tom thinks it may be much, much deeper

and could be hiding a grisly secret.

narrator: The team is chasing a 300-year-old mystery

in the Bermuda Triangle.

While Mike Barnette prepares for his second dive

at the primary target, Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe

are exploring Dean's Blue Hole in the hopes

it could offer up clues to aid their investigation

of Red Snapper Sink.

One theory is that Red Snapper, Dean's Blue Hole,

and other sinkholes produce whirlpools powerful enough

to suck in ships.

- I think it's going.

Yeah.

narrator: If they can get an ROV to the bottom,

they may find proof.

- As water goes from one side of the island to the other,

it's pushing water in and out.

So that gives us this sucking motion or blowing motion

in the blue holes, and this is why

we see so much water moving so fast through the blue holes.

narrator: Multiple deaths have occurred at Dean's Blue Hole

in recent years, including a professional free diver

attempting to set a world record here.

- It's a dangerous place because the deep edge

is so close to shore.

If your feet slip, you're gonna be sucked

right down into the hole.

I wouldn't be surprised that many people--

not only modern people,

but people going back thousands of years--

have drowned in this particular cave.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

narrator: Back in Florida, Barnette and Jimmy

want to understand how these whirlpools could form

before they attempt to dive Red Snapper Sink again.

♪ ♪

Barnette meets with local geologist Jim Flocks,

who knows Red Snapper Sink well.

- The fact that this has not been fully explored obviously

is a draw for us to actually plumb the depths of this.

What can you tell us about it?

- Well, there's not a lot known about Red Snapper Sink.

It was discovered in the '60s.

It's clearly thousands of years old.

narrator: Around the time Captain Jingle's pirate fleet

disappeared, there are stories of thirsty sailors

stopping at Red Snapper.

- From what we hear in historical times,

sailors would observe a plume of fresh water

coming up from the bottom.

There are certainly accounts of the sailors

drawing fresh water from these springs.

- So the water flow out there to Red Snapper Sink

is kind of like an underground river.

- Yes.

There are areas in the limestone

where the water is actually moving

like a river underground.

narrator: It may explain how a whirlpool could form.

During the Ice Age, rainwater seeping

through crevices on the Florida landmass

formed long underground rivers.

As oceans rose, the Earth collapsed,

creating vertical caves like Red Snapper Sink

and Dean's Blue Hole.

It's possible that the freshwater rivers,

combined with tides,

force water back into the caves,

creating a suction effect.

And since tidal conditions around the holes change,

these whirlpools may not always be present.

♪ ♪

- I've still got a lot of cable.

Good.

narrator: Back at Dean's Blue Hole,

the team sends their ROV into the abyss.

- Taz is right over the middle of the--

- That's the center.

- Middle over the-- - Oh, it's disappearing.

- There it goes. It's diving down.

- Come in a little bit more, and then...

- Have you got clean visual?

- Yes.

- There's the first images.

- Come on, baby.

♪ ♪

Something weird. - Yeah, see those?

- I think they're little bits of algae that are being

sucked in by the current. - Okay.

♪ ♪

- Look at the sand.

- Sand moving down, there's a flow.

♪ ♪

- So could it be that we created

the fall on the way down, and now it's starting to--

- I don't think so because you can see

a continuous flow of sand going

over the edge going down.

- Gotcha.

- That sand's gotta be going somewhere.

It can't be going in at this rate

for thousands and thousands of years

without filling the place up.

So somewhere, that sand is being sucked down deeper

or farther or something.

- The ROV's bouncing a bit.

- Yeah, really, eh?

Getting in a minute.

- Definitely getting-- taking hits on this stuff.

- Are we okay?

We'll see.

- Well, at this point, yeah. We're not seeing anything.

♪ ♪

Uh-oh. No, no, no, no.

- Come on, baby, come on.

- Yeah, we lost signal. It's not coming back.

- Yeah, we have no controls.

- Nothing? - Nah.

- Is it fixable?

- I don't know.

- [bleep].

♪ ♪

narrator: Since the days of Christopher Columbus,

mariners have described strange equipment failures

in the Bermuda Triangle--

bizarre compass anomalies, sudden electrical failures.

Is there a common technical explanation

for the malfunction,

or could something more mysterious account for it?

[indistinct chatter]

After examining the ROV,

Evan can only diagnose the mysterious malfunction

as some sort of electrical short

in the vehicle's fiber optic cable.

The dive must be delayed so Evan can make repairs.

- Well, how much time do you need then?

- Another few hours.

narrator: Still, the ROV has collected valuable images.

If a powerful whirlpool exists here,

there might be one just as big or bigger at Red Snapper Sink.

♪ ♪

With the mission temporarily on hold,

Wayne and David head inland in search of more clues.

[dog barking]

They've arranged to meet with a family who have made

their living fishing on these waters for generations,

and have experienced the Bermuda triangle's

mysterious power firsthand.

- You have a lot of people on the island,

a big percentage of people who don't even

want to go to the blue hole.

- Oh, yeah.

- Will not go to Dean's Blue Hole?

- No, no, no, no.

Sometime, I've been there,

and I've seen some pretty strong tide.

Like, the tide coming in and swirling in the middle.

You know, going out there, I experienced

a lot of stuff with my dad.

We had, like, a manual compass.

And then at one point, it just started spinning.

- The compass started spinning?

- Compass started spinning.

I never saw that in my life.

And I thought something was wrong with it.

I knocked on it. I tried, you know?

And it just kept spinning.

And this actually did that for, like,

30 minutes before it stopped.

- 30 minutes straight? - Yeah.

- Was there anything in the area that could have--

you know, something you may have been sailing over, or--

- Yeah, well, just to me, it just looked normal,

the ground we was on.

But it was the strangest thing I've ever seen.

♪ ♪

narrator: 600 miles away at Red Snapper Sink,

Barnette and Jimmy are about to make their second dive.

On their first dive, they saw odd rectangular stones

that might be ballast from Jingle's ships.

- Square and elongated, almost like monoliths

from "2001: A Space Odyssey."

It was just surreal.

narrator: On this dive, they'll use

valuable bottom time to get a closer look.

Given the depths and the underwater river,

it's a risky dive.

- Potentially, there could be flow at the bottom.

- Right.

- So we know cave diving, you know,

siphon flow is gonna pull you into the cave

versus an outflow.

So we should just be aware.

Obviously, when we get to the bottom,

and you start, you know, feeling yourself drifting,

that could be a sign that there's passage nearby,

and we don't want to invert.

- Don't go to the siphon side of it.

We want to work into it a little bit,

especially at these depths.

♪ ♪

narrator: There is very little room for error.

For this dive, the team wears a specially calibrated

atmospheric dive suit,

which acts like armor to protect their bodies

from the crushing depths of more than

700 pounds per square inch.

But what these suits can't do is extend the diver's time

at the bottom of the sinkhole.

Once again, they will have just 15 minutes

before they begin to resurface.

But even that short window will cost them

hours of decompression time

to readjust to normal atmospheric pressure.

- Any possible thing you can think of,

including a cut finger, that's something they're gonna

have to deal with on their own

for the next three to five hours.

♪ ♪

narrator: Wayne Abbott and David O'Keefe

are investigating killer whirlpools

in the Bermuda Triangle,

where they've heard stories of bodies

at the bottom of Dean's Blue Hole.

This huge sinkhole has properties

similar to their main target of Red Snapper Sink,

where a pirate fleet disappeared in the late 1600s.

If there are bodies, could there be a link?

- Where exactly are we heading right now, Nikita?

- We're headed to the shrimp hole

here in Long Island, which is an inland blue hole.

And this is how we have these access points,

portals to not only fresh water,

but also to all that lives beneath our feet.

narrator: Dean's Blue Hole was part of a larger network

of blue holes on this island.

Like Red Snapper, they are connected

by underground waterways.

Nikita Shiel-Rolle is a biologist

who has been studying Dean's Blue Hole for 20 years.

- For the indigenous Lucayans,

they had an understanding of these caves

as being these portals to and this resting place

for ancestors and those who would have passed on,

which would have been clued whether offerings that had

been made into these caves,

these caves being used as burial sites.

- Burial sites?

[dramatic music]

- I personally have explored caves

where we've unearthed remains of Lucayan.

- So you actually have found remains

in the blue holes yourself? - Yes.

- That's unbelievable.

I just can't believe that these blue holes

became ceremonial sites.

- This is a cool cave.

- Wow, look at this.

- Way different than Dean's Blue Hole.

- It is. This is an inland cave.

Be careful. [laughs]

♪ ♪

- One of the questions I want to ask,

you said you found human remains in a blue hole.

Now, was that burial,

or could it have been sacrifice to the gods?

I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

- So from my understanding, these were ceremonial burials.

And definitely, I can say that from an Indigenous perspective,

when offerings were not made to the natural spirits,

the natural spirits showed up.

narrator: These ceremonial burials were believed

to be an offering to appease Guabancex,

a supernatural force revered by indigenous peoples

that bears a strong resemblance to what we today

call the Bermuda Triangle.

- We tend to be very 20th and 21st century-centric

when we look at the Bermuda Triangle, right?

But we're talking about things that

go back thousands, thousands.

- Hundreds, thousands of years, yeah.

- When we think about exploring the Bermuda Triangle

and uncovering the unknown,

Western science is very linear, right?

A plus B equals C.

And while there's huge value in Western science,

we have to remember that we don't know what we don't know.

♪ ♪

narrator: Could there be a connection

between ancient Bahamians

making offerings to these holes

and stories that colonial era sailors

disposed of coffins in Red Snapper Sink,

some believe as a way to appease their power?

If that's the case, it suggests

that power is all too real.

♪ ♪

- Well, it's starting to look good.

narrator: With the ROV back online,

the team is now wondering if they will see evidence

of human remains at the bottom of Dean's Blue Hole.

♪ ♪

- You can see we're going down quite a rate, actually.

- Absolutely.

Everything is going so fast.

- We must be getting close to the bottom.

- I would think we're getting close.

♪ ♪

- Evan, how fast do you think we're descending?

- We were averaging 50, 60 feet or so a minute.

♪ ♪

We're at about 10 m--whoa! - Whoa!

- We're on bottom. - Holy God.

It's amazing.

Here we are, bottom of Dean's Blue Hole.

And we're the first ones to see it.

That's amazing. That is clear.

- Sure.

- It's like we're in a snow globe.

♪ ♪

narrator: Against all odds, the team has put an ROV

on the bottom of Dean's Blue Hole

in the Bermuda Triangle.

And they see a startling clue

suggesting the dangerous power of the water here.

- See, the other thing that's interesting here

is that we're seeing a lot of sand.

But there's a lot of either seaweed, algae,

whatever it is at the bottom that's not covered.

- I think there's a lot of flow that's coming in and out

of this, and it's literally sucking a lot of material

from the nearby reefs that's going in here.

narrator: Tom Iliffe believes the hole is creating

a powerful suction effect,

though it's not clear if that power is enough

to pull down a ship, at least here.

Then they see something else.

- This is an enormous chamber we're looking at,

hundreds and hundreds of feet high,

unknown distances wide.

narrator: Tom believes the sand flow the team observed

at the opening of the hole

and the slope they're seeing at the bottom

implies a massive underwater cave system.

This may play a role in the whirlpools observed by locals

and potentially explain how large ships

could get sucked down.

- Look at there.

It's going down-- how steep that is.

I think there's a cone of sand right in the middle.

Look at there.

You can see the slope going up.

That's going up to the top of the cone to the right,

down into unknown depths to the left.

Wow.

- So in other words, this goes a bit deeper

than we ever expected.

- So Evan, can you start to move the ROV forward?

- We can certainly give it a shot, absolutely.

- And if we can just get to the wall.

- Yeah, for sure.

- It's amazing that-- it's so clear.

- I know. - But we got a lot of--oh, no.

- What the hell? - What?

- What happened? - Uh...

we have lost everything here for a sec.

Hold on.

♪ ♪

- Uh-oh. - No, no, no, no.

- So what do you suspect at the moment?

Do we have just something that disconnected?

- I mean, I know the cable's not gone

because we have normal power.

So you know, I really don't know.

narrator: Strangely, the ROV still has power

and appears to be functioning normally.

But the visual signal has been cut off.

With the team at a loss to explain

the strange ROV malfunction this time,

and the limited resources of the island,

they are forced to call an end to the mission.

- It doesn't make sense.

I mean, we planned it out perfectly, what we thought.

And then the screen just went blank.

- There were no snags.

There were no tangles. There was nothing.

It was all systems go until it wasn't.

- I mean, we did get the first images,

you know, of the bottom of Dean's Blue Hole.

So we can go back, review it with the team.

- Yeah, the idea is to take it back to the team

that's coming out of Red Snapper Hole

and put the two together,

and let's see what we can come up with.

narrator: Back in Florida,

Mike Barnette and Jimmy Gadomski

return to Red Snapper Sink

to try and put it all together.

How do the rock slabs they saw connect to the disappearance

of Thomas Jingle's fleet?

Just how big is this cave system?

And have they just scratched the surface

on a potential lead for multiple missing ships

in the Bermuda Triangle?

The divers reach the bottom, and the clock starts.

They have only 15 minutes

until nitrogen narcosis could set in.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

The divers discover even more of the cut rock slabs.

- The whole bottom was covered in it.

Perfect right angles just sitting on the bottom.

narrator: The team scrambles to find hard evidence

that would support the idea that these slabs are ballast,

the remnants of a pirate fleet.

As the clock ticks down, they look out

for any signs of a cave system on the edges of the pit.

♪ ♪

And then time's up.

♪ ♪

But as the team reaches the top of their ascent,

Barnette suddenly spots a new clue--

not at the bottom of Red Snapper Sink, but at the top.

♪ ♪

- Hey, guys, we had an awesome dive in Red Snapper Sink.

But I want to hear how it went with you guys in the Bahamas.

How'd it go?

- Oh, boy. - Oh, boy.

We got a nice little teaser.

We got down there like, you know,

putting the first foot on the Moon.

And then, poof.

- But we got a lot of--oh, no.

- What the hell? - What?

- What happened?

- Everything went off.

- Did you get some footage out of it?

- We did get some footage.

♪ ♪

- So there you go.

- Yeah, that's where we land.

- On the bottom.

- What we think is the bottom because Tom suspected that,

based on what we had seen here,

that this goes a lot deeper than 660 feet down.

We're on the top of the sand cone that's going down,

and then there are long, long caves

that have been sucking in the sand

for, you know, decades, if not centuries.

And if Tom's theory is correct, all we had to do

was get down one of the slopes down at the bottom.

- There is a true whirlpool effect with Dean's Blue Hole,

depending on the tide.

But we couldn't explore it to see

if there was any kind of cave system.

But we did make the bottom.

We just weren't able to go anywhere.

But we're eager to find out what you found.

♪ ♪

narrator: If the divers can confirm the rock slabs

in Red Snapper Sink are ballast from a shipwreck,

it could solve the mystery of Jingle's lost fleet.

- What do you think it is?

- Wasn't until we got up shallow enough that we had,

I think, clear evidence of what was going on.

So you'll see we're coming up the side of the sinkhole,

and our anchor line is resting against the sinkhole.

- And it's rubbing against the rim.

- This is very--it's very, very, very soft limestone.

Our anchor line was basically almost a foot in,

just sawing away like butter. - No way.

- It was cutting straight into the rock.

- And as I looked on the side of that,

there's another cut mark parallel to that.

So the light bulb, poof.

The anchor lines are sawing away.

And then eventually, it twists a little bit.

It's gonna scissor it off,

and that slab is gonna fall to the bottom.

- That's why there's so many.

- And that's why it's perfectly smooth.

- People are fishing this nonstop.

This is a common fishing-- common fishing spot.

- So basically, it's man-made-ish.

In other words, unintentional, but man-made nonetheless.

- Definitely.

♪ ♪

narrator: Despite the challenges,

the team's investigations

of Red Snapper Sink and Dean's Blue Hole

have led to intriguing discoveries.

- We've heard a lot of legend and lores associated

with Red Snapper Sink.

We got to the bottom, we see these shapes

in the distance in the gloom.

We're like, were these stories true?

To bring back an answer for what caused that,

that was really gratifying.

- It was amazing that we were the first ones to drop an ROV

and get to the bottom

and just get those first images.

- Yeah, without a doubt.

I mean, that constant fall of sand,

who knows what has been covered up by years and years

of that constant drip?

narrator: Whether or not these sinkholes

are the ship-swallowing monsters

of Bermuda Triangle lore

or claimed Thomas Jingle's lost fleet

will take further investigation.

- Just because of what Mike and Jimmy found at the bottom

of Red Snapper Sinkhole,

I'm just eager to get back to Dean's Blue Hole

to just see if there's something

that's just as amazing

and just as mysterious at the bottom of that sinkhole.

- Yeah, that's really the next step--to go back,

get the ROV down into the sides,

and do the entire circuit at the bottom.

That will likely give us many more answers

than we found on this one.

narrator: What is clear is that these holes in the ocean

are capable of tremendous power and peril.

Their secrets are only just starting to surface.

And with hundreds more out there waiting to be explored,

they could very well be key in solving the bigger mystery

of the Bermuda Triangle.