A small uninhabited island in the Gulf of Mexico has disappeared entirely - fuelling online debate of a potential “cover up”.
For years, Bermeja Island has been a source of confusion for a number of academics as they attempt to understand what happened to the phantom islet.
Historically, the landmass appeared on maps and nautical charts - but after the turn of the 20th century, it seemed to vanish completely.
The island was originally marked around 100 miles off the north coast Yucatan Peninsula in the channel.
But it has been estimated that cartographers began to exclude the island on maps around the 20th century - without any apparent reason for doing so.
Geographer Jesús Israel Baxin Martínez told The Sun: “Between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Bermeja Island was recorded on maps from various sources.
“In the 1858 Mexican Atlas, Bermeja Island clearly appears north of Cayo Arenas… but a year later, in the 1886 General Map of the United Mexican States, the island no longer appears.
“It is likely that the cartographer made some revision… but these [islands] had not been corroborated.”
Previous expeditions in search of the mystical island in 1977 and 2009 confirmed that Bermeja did not exist at all - leading to wild online speculation as to what really happened to the land.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
One scientific explanation has suggested that Bermeja might have simply eroded over time, although this theory has been dubbed “implausible”.
Martinez said: “It seems impossible that sudden events could have gone unrecorded and left no trace over the past five centuries.”
He insisted that “traces would remain” if any major erosion or increase in sea level occurred.
However, a much more sinister theory is that the island was destroyed due to it lying in a geopolitically strategic location.
Due to the islet’s geographic position, Bermeja would have stretched Mexico’s Exclusive Economic Zone into the channel, which would have boosted its entitlement to hugely valuable oil reserves deep in the sea.
As a result, conspiracy theorists have floated the idea that the site was excluded from maps - or even sunk or bombed - to manipulate maritime boundaries, which would have been in the US’s interest.
Nevertheless, Martinez dismissed the idea as merely a “conspiracy theory”.
“Isla Bermeja was a controversy because it was a key area of the Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” he explained, speaking to Mexico News Daily.
He added: “There were official searches around this time to see if there was some remnant of this island because the expansion of this zone for Mexico would mean an abundance of oil.”
Martínez declared the “most plausible” theory was simply a “cartographic error replicated and unverified over more than 400 years”.
To this day, the island’s mysterious disappearance has remained unsolved, as academics grapple to come to terms with what happened to the long-lost land.
Find Out More...
For years, Bermeja Island has been a source of confusion for a number of academics as they attempt to understand what happened to the phantom islet.
Historically, the landmass appeared on maps and nautical charts - but after the turn of the 20th century, it seemed to vanish completely.
The island was originally marked around 100 miles off the north coast Yucatan Peninsula in the channel.
But it has been estimated that cartographers began to exclude the island on maps around the 20th century - without any apparent reason for doing so.
Geographer Jesús Israel Baxin Martínez told The Sun: “Between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Bermeja Island was recorded on maps from various sources.
“In the 1858 Mexican Atlas, Bermeja Island clearly appears north of Cayo Arenas… but a year later, in the 1886 General Map of the United Mexican States, the island no longer appears.
“It is likely that the cartographer made some revision… but these [islands] had not been corroborated.”
Previous expeditions in search of the mystical island in 1977 and 2009 confirmed that Bermeja did not exist at all - leading to wild online speculation as to what really happened to the land.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
- WATCH LIVE: Rare partial Solar Eclipse takes over skies across the world
- Archaeologists baffled after finding 4,800-year-old burial site full of sacrificed teenagers
- Archaeology breakthrough as iron age hoard could rewrite history of life in Britain 2,000 years ago
One scientific explanation has suggested that Bermeja might have simply eroded over time, although this theory has been dubbed “implausible”.
Martinez said: “It seems impossible that sudden events could have gone unrecorded and left no trace over the past five centuries.”
He insisted that “traces would remain” if any major erosion or increase in sea level occurred.
However, a much more sinister theory is that the island was destroyed due to it lying in a geopolitically strategic location.
Due to the islet’s geographic position, Bermeja would have stretched Mexico’s Exclusive Economic Zone into the channel, which would have boosted its entitlement to hugely valuable oil reserves deep in the sea.
As a result, conspiracy theorists have floated the idea that the site was excluded from maps - or even sunk or bombed - to manipulate maritime boundaries, which would have been in the US’s interest.
Nevertheless, Martinez dismissed the idea as merely a “conspiracy theory”.
“Isla Bermeja was a controversy because it was a key area of the Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico,” he explained, speaking to Mexico News Daily.
He added: “There were official searches around this time to see if there was some remnant of this island because the expansion of this zone for Mexico would mean an abundance of oil.”
Martínez declared the “most plausible” theory was simply a “cartographic error replicated and unverified over more than 400 years”.
To this day, the island’s mysterious disappearance has remained unsolved, as academics grapple to come to terms with what happened to the long-lost land.
Find Out More...