Hey, 42 here. 500 miles east of the southern tip of Africa, in the Indian Ocean, is the remote island of Madagascar. But then, if you pan the map another 600 miles to the east, you'll spot a dot that's tricky to spot. This small island is only 28 miles wide, yet despite its remoteness, it's surprisingly well inhabited, sporting a healthy population of 1.3 million. and a bustling city, Port Louis.
But it's on the southwestern tip of this former French colony where you'll find the edge of the map. This strange spectacle, which appears as though the ocean is sucking the landmass unceasingly into the water, is an underwater waterfall. That might sound strange, impossible even. How can water fall under water to create a waterfall? This natural wonder is best appreciated from above.
Helicopter tours are available just to view the underwater waterfall, and as you hover above you'll see how the ocean floor just drops away dramatically, and the sand and silt appear to tumble haplessly into the abyss. It's like Mother Nature is trying to see how silly she can be before we all call her out on it. But in this particular instance, we must call her out.
Because what you're looking at isn't a waterfall at all. Adoo is an all-in-one management software that provides entrepreneurs with a range of applications to simplify the day-to-day management of their business. Personally, I use a bunch of different business applications that are all really pricey, so having them all under one roof with Adoo is a game-changer for me. The first Adoo application is free for life, including hosting and support.
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So click the link in the description to try out Hadoo for yourself today. And a big thanks to Hadoo for sponsoring this video. Underneath the lush tropics of the neighbouring Reunion Island is one of the planet's most active volcanoes, called the Reunion Hotspot. This underwater volcano created Mauritius about 8 million years ago and Reunion about 2 million years ago.
This means that these islands were somewhat precisely placed into the deep ocean by volcanic activity, resulting in a very unique geography. As you can see, there is a stark and sudden delineation between the shallow waters around the volcanic earth and the deep waters of the Indian Ocean. Water easily absorbs red light from the visible light spectrum. Red light can penetrate a maximum of 50 meters.
Whereas blue light can penetrate up to 200 meters. So the deeper a body of water is, the darker blue it appears to be. However, the so-called underwater waterfall on the southern tip of Mauritius isn't actually a waterfall at all.
This optical illusion is caused by sand. Ocean currents constantly drag sand and silt from the shallow shelf of this volcanic island into the deeper waters that surround it. So the flowing effect that can be observed in this particular spot is the movement of sand being sucked from the shallows into the deep watery abyss. And the stark contrast between the light azure shallows and the deep blue waters really amps up the visual effect. You might be thinking, if the landmass is constantly being eroded by ocean currents and sucked into the deep waters below, Isn't the island of Mauritius going to disappear one day?
And the answer is yes. Yes, it is. Volcanic islands such as this and Reunion typically only last for a few tens of millions of years.
And Mauritius has already been eroding for a few million years now. In a few more million years, it will be entirely consumed by Davy Jones's locker. So it transpires that the Mauritius underwater waterfall is actually more of a sandfall. And a waterfall underwater... doesn't actually exist.
Except it does! What if I told you that the world's tallest waterfall isn't Angel Falls in Venezuela at 979 meters, and the world's greatest waterfall isn't actually Inga Falls in the Congo, with its mighty 25,000 cubic feet meters per second flow rate. In fact the world's biggest waterfall dwarfs both of these and it isn't even a fair contest.
This watery giant has a flow rate of 5 million cubic meters per second and a drop of 3,500 meters. This behemoth is the Denmark Strait Cataract, the largest tallest and most powerful waterfall on planet Earth. And confusingly, for absolutely everyone alive, it's nowhere f***ing near Denmark. To be fair, it's named after the Denmark Strait, a slip of water between Greenland and Iceland. Named so because the Kingdom of Denmark used to own Iceland, and it still owns Greenland to this day.
As a quick interesting aside, the Denmark Strait was where the pride of the British Navy, HMS Hood, was sunk during World War II by the German battleship Bismarck. Only three of the 1,418 strong crew survived. Unlike the Mauritius underwater waterfall, the Denmark Strait cataract is a waterfall.
Well, sort of. However, if you took a boat out to this location and observed the waters, you wouldn't have any idea that such a titanic force of nature is churning away beneath your feet. The waterfall is only observable using specialist scientific measurement instruments. So how can an underwater waterfall exist? And why does this particular one happen to be so bloody big?
Across the five oceans, a constant interplay of currents perform their slippery dance. Warm and cold currents churn through the world's waters and their temperatures and directional patterns remain largely unchanged over time. The sun generally heats the water and land masses near the equator, so currents closer to the equator tend to be warmer than their pole-bound cousins. The inertia of Earth's rotation causes winds and ocean currents near the equator to flow from east to west.
Geologists call these winds trade winds. Whereas winds and water near the poles are coerced from west to east. These are known as westerlies. Trade winds cause ocean currents that travel in a clockwise motion, whereas westerlies go anti-clockwise.
The most famous of all the ocean currents is probably the Gulf Stream. Originating in the Gulf of Mexico, this carries warm water up the east coast of North America before forming the North Atlantic Current, where it continues to surround the British Isles and even warms the coast of New York. Norway.
Ålesund in Norway is further north than Anchorage, Alaska, yet it enjoys relatively mild temperatures of 1 to 5 degrees Celsius in January. At the same time, Anchorage will be between minus 5 to minus 10 degrees. In fact, most of Norway is a shockingly mild and lush green country, considering how close it is to the Arctic Circle, and it has the Gulf Stream to thank for that. This constant flow of warm water heats the landmass of Norway, and the United Kingdom, and the rest of Northern Europe for that matter, which would all be significantly colder if not for the Gulf Stream.
But often around the world warm ocean currents collide head-on with cold ocean currents, and because trade winds head in the opposite direction to westerlies, When they collide, the result is often turbulent. They usually create a whirlpool effect known as an eddy. Often these aren't visible from the surface, but beneath there can be hundreds of square miles of intense cold-on-hot action bubbling away.
So now that we understand the interplay of the oceans, we can start to build up a picture of what's going on in the Denmark Strait. Here, frigid ocean currents flow down from the Nordic seas of the Arctic Circle and collide directly with warm ocean currents flowing up from the equator. In this instance, it's that old familiar, the Gulf Stream.
Cold water is denser than warm water, so cold water will sink below warm water when the two meet. Warm water is also exerting pressure on the cold water, pushing it downwards. The result is a fast and powerful movement of cold water from sea level to the depths of the ocean. However, colliding currents are found all over the planet, and not many of them result in such a gigantic underwater waterfall, like in the Denmark Strait.
There's something special about this location, and it's all due to its unique topography. The continental plates that Greenland and Iceland sit upon are a staggering 3,500 metres higher than the deep ocean plate that makes up the floor of the Denmark Strait. In other words, there's a huge valley flanked by monumentally tall and steep cliffs in this particular part of the sea.
And the Gulf Stream, more specifically the warm Irminga Current which branches off from it, meets the cold Greenland current at this exact spot. The warm water forces the cold water downwards, shoving it into the deep valley below. The result is millions of cubic meters of water every second flowing over the underwater cliff edges just off Greenland's coast. If you could somehow colour the warm water differently from the cold water in this location, you'd observe what looks exactly like a waterfall.
A really bloody big waterfall. What's even more amazing is that the water that falls to the seafloor from the Denmark Strait Cataract doesn't just stay there, it travels. To the other side of the planet, the frigid water follows the topography of the seabed all the way south to Antarctica. Here, the water rises again near the coasts of South Africa and South America, where it joins various other currents and is eventually carried all the way north again in an endless loop.
This unique system has a name. It's called the Global Conveyor Belt, otherwise known in scientific circles as thermohaline circulation. This continuous global system of dense cold water flowing along the seabed, then rising again to the surface to form warm water currents, regulates the planet's climate. It keeps a check on extreme temperatures, making cold countries more mild and cooling hotter countries.
It's like global air conditioning, and the Denmark Strait Cataract is the source of one of the most crucial sections of the global conveyor belt. As the ocean's secret giant continues its unseen journey, It quietly reminds us that the most powerful forces on our planet often lie hidden from view. You may have never heard of this awe-inspiring waterfall before, and you'll never get to see it with your own eyes. Yet, you feel its effects every single day.
Whether it be a crisp January morning or a breezy summer's afternoon, remember that an invisible, three and a half thousand metre waterfall at the top of the world had a part to play in your day. Thanks for watching. Just a quick word to say that I couldn't make these videos without the support of my Patreon members.
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