PixabayWe’ve all heard of crop circles but scientists have revealed the reason why mysterious circles have been appearing under the surface of the sea.
These sea circles have been found around the Balearic islands as well as the Danish coast, and scientists said these are in fact areas that are ‘devoid of vegetation’.
Doesn’t sound too scary when you put it like that, but it means sea grass in that area could be at risk from contamination and this leads to consequences for the Earth’s larger ecosystem, according to Science Advances.
A lack of sea grass is often an indicator of dirty/contaminated waters or climate change, according to the paper.
It states:
The spatial organisation of vegetation landscapes is a key factor in the assessment of ecosystem health and functioning.
Spatial configurations of vegetation landscapes act as potential indicators of climatic or human forcing affecting the ecosystem.
Satellite images and side-scan cartography reveals that complex seascapes are abundant in meadows of Posidonia Oceanica (sea grass), suggesting that self-organised submarine vegetation patterns may be prevalent but have remained thus far largely hidden under the sea.
Science Advances continues:
Although the sea grass around Mallorca is a strongly clonal plant, it’s very slow horizontal spread of a few centimetres per year implies that losses are essentially irreversible.
Nothing paranormal going off here, just, you know, damage to the environment.
