Observatory disappears

The shredded fiber-optical cable…all that is left of the 1-ton observatory – Photo: Research Dive Center of the CAU

Yes, it’s true and very strange. A large underwater observatory resting 72 feet below the surface off the coast of Germany has vanished, baffling researchers. All that remains of the one-ton structure is a frayed cable that connected it to an on-shore research center. This article is based on reports  from bbc.com and gizmodo.com, but we first saw it on Whitley Streiber’s Unknown Country.

According to the BBC, on August 21, 2019 at 8:15 p.m. local time, the GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel lost contact with the observatory, originally installed at the mouth of Eckernförde Bay in the Baltic Sea, north of the city of Kiel, in 2016.

But when divers visited the site to investigate the cause behind the observatory’s sudden silence, they found that it was missing entirely, with only the tattered end of the platform’s communications cable left behind. Experts are perplexed by the disappearance of the 770-kilogram (1,700-pound) platform.

“[At] first we thought of a transmission error. The devices were gone, the divers could not find them anymore,” according to Hermann Bange, project coordinator for the Boknis Eck Observatory. “When the divers reached the bottom of the sea last week at the observatory’s location, they found only the torn off land cable. It was completely shredded.”

The €300,000 ($332,000) observatory measured local seawater quality, including water temperature and the levels of salt, oxygen, nutrients, chlorophyll and methane from the seafloor at a depth of 22 meters (72 feet). This data was used to evaluate the health of the ecosystem in and around the southwestern Baltic Sea. By monitoring these changes, scientists can be alerted to potential problems and take the required countermeasures. Scientists have been collecting data in the bay since the 1950s. The observatory is also used in the COSYNA network (Coastal Observing System for Northern and Arctic Seas) of the HZG.

The missing observatory consists of two racks, one weighing 250 kilograms (550 pounds) and the other 100 kilograms (220 pounds) each. The racks include a frame holding the power supply (along with a heavy cable connecting the station to the coast) and a frame to hold the sensors. Both racks were “removed with great force from their position,” according to the GEOMAR statement.

So WTF happened? Who or what removed the science station, and why? German police were alerted to the incident and are now investigating. Imagine being a detective assigned to that mystery! Find the missing underwater observatory. GEOMAR researchers have ruled out the possibility that the structure was dragged off by a storm, the tide or a large animal. Hard to imagine what kind of animal that would be!

GEOMAR suspects that the platform was stolen by looters for the steel in the racks, and possibly for the scientific instruments themselves. However, that explanation is puzzling when you consider the difficulty of the task vs. the reward, and the fact that the observatory was located in a restricted area where even local fishing boats are verboten. Apparently there was no video feed from the observatory being sent to the research center. That would’ve help solve the mystery.

An article in gizmodo.com suggests that the disappearance could be the result of a nefarious military operation conducted by an unknown state actor. The article also notes that the unusual event is similar to the disappearances of lost naval vessels that previously rested on the ocean floor. Huh?  What sunken ships are they talking about? We are going to look into that one. Supposedly, looters took them apart, the article says. How do you dissemble a ship on the bottom of the sea to the extent that it disappears?

We want to propose another option about the missing observatory, one the authorities haven’t mentioned. Could the disappearances be related to activity by USOs—unidentified submerged objects, the underwater version of UFOs? If a USO can swallow the observatory, such underwater crafts might also be responsible for the missing sunken vessels.

USOs have been reported in oceans around the world over past decades. One hotspot of USO activity is in the deep waters of the Tongue of the Ocean off the coast of Andros Island in the North Atlantic, which happens to be the location of the secret U.S. naval base, AUTEC—Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center. That base is sometimes referred to by UFO researcher as the underwater Area 51.

Of course, the idea of alien looters might be a bit out of the mainstream. Yet, just yesterday (9-21-19)  the U.S. Navy officially verified that three videos that were recorded by Navy pilots and shown on a recent documentary TV series were UFOs and fake videos.

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One of two frames that comprise the missing Boknis Eck Observatory.Image: Research Dive Center of the CAU