The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle can easily be explained, a professor who has studied the region at length has revealed.
The infamous Triangle, located between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda, has swallowed myriad aircraft, ships and crews since at least 1800 in mysterious circumstances.
Some have blamed aliens or supernatural threats for the missing vessels - but a leading oceanographer has offered a more down-to-earth explanation.
Dr Simon Boxall of the University of Southampton said "rogue waves", which are enormous walls of water measuring up to 100 feet tall, were first discovered in the mid-90s.
The Bermuda Triangle is located between Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda
|GETTY
He said: "You get two or three storms coming together and, what happens is, the waves from different storms interact.
"The biggest waves you get from a single storm are usually about 10 metres, 12 metres tops - which [is] very big, but not sort of horrendous big."
However, he explained you can get two peaks or troughs which happen at the same time.
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"You end up with, rather than a 10-metre wave, a 20-metre wave," he said.
"If you get three different wave systems coming together, you can get a 30-metre wave, but they also cancel out.
"So you get this sort of beat pattern... sort of a few low waves and some big waves and so on."
As these waves continue to come together, even bigger waves form, and they do not act like normal bodies of water.
Oceanographer Dr Simon Boxall has studied the Bermuda Triangle for years
|UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON
Instead, the oceanographer likened the waves to splashing in a bath.
He said: "You splash around in the bath, and you sort of bring a couple of waves together in the bath, you get that sort of big plop coming from the bath which foes down again and that is effectively rogue waves.
"Something like a supertanker or a big cargo vessel" measuring around 400 metres long can be destroyed by a wave which is 30 metres high.
Dr Boxall said: "The distance between the peaks is maybe only, let's say, 200, 300 metres.
"So you've got a boat being suspended, one end by the front of the wave, the other back end by the back of the wave - in the middle, there's nothing - so the boat breaks in two."
A ship measuring around 400 metres long can be destroyed by a wave which is 30 metres high (file photo)
|GETTY
However, he argues that most disappearances will have been due to human error or weather, as rogue waves are quite rare and do not simply appear out of nowhere.
Although they can be difficult to measure, scientists are increasingly using satellite imaging to better understand the maritime phenomena.
According to Dr Boxall, academics have "ignored" the Bermuda Triangle for years because "there's nothing there".
Instead, the myths persist because the public is so interested in the area.
He said: "People will ignore facts and figures all the time. We have real problems in trying to persuade people once they're determined."