Dragon’s TriangleĪt least five vessels have met their demise in the sinister Dragon’s Triangle off the southern coast of Japan, including a research boat that was engulfed in the eruption of an undersea volcano. Though rational explanations abound-the powerful Gulf Stream sluices through the triangle, possibly whisking away evidence of wrecks, and seasonal hurricanes batter the coast-the mystery of this scalene enigma persists. A 1950 Miami Herald article first collated the region’s unexplained losses, which included a plane with 25 passengers in 1948 and five navy torpedo planes in 1945, spurring tales of its “supernatural” attributes. The Bermuda Triangle, a swath of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, has allegedly caused the disappearance of at least a dozen ships and planes. Either way, here are all three sides of the story behind five geographical ocean triangles. Or maybe we just like keeping our chaos within clearly ordered boundaries. Maybe that’s to be expected, since triangles are commonplace, appearing in everything from alchemical formulas to corporate logos where they represent strength, law, and stability. One shape that emerges as we grapple with such phenomena is the triangle. (Or, perhaps, the Virgin Mary in toast.) Oceans teem with chaos-from unprovoked shark attacks to mysteriously disappearing vessels to fantastically convoluted coral-reef ecosystems-that can trigger this pattern recognition. There’s even a fancy neuroscience word for when we impose order on what we see: apophenia, or “appears apart from.” This phenomenon makes us see a pattern in random points on a map, or a face in a cluster of shapes. Give humans chaos, and we’ll find a pattern. Octo| 700 words, about 3 minutes Share this article Illustration by Mark Garrison All Three Sides of the Story Five geographical triangles that shaped the ocean’s history. Triangles: we draw them across the ocean to simplify complexity and chaos.