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Speaker 1: thinking sideways to learn more and thanks Thinking Sideways. I
Speaker 1: don't understand you never know stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Hey, guys, welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Devin, joined
Speaker 1: as usual by Joe and Steve, and not to be
Speaker 1: labor point, but this is going to be the second
Speaker 1: episode in what we're calling our summer series. Um. Briefly,
Speaker 1: if you have been listening to the show for a while,
Speaker 1: you know that we put have put out an episode
Speaker 1: at least once a week every week for three years,
Speaker 1: and uh we're tired. Uh So instead of, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of doing like a summer break like some podcasts do,
Speaker 1: we're just doing a series of shorts and that will
Speaker 1: allow us to take some much needed recuperation time. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, we can start working on some of these
Speaker 1: bigger shows that we've been trying to work on that
Speaker 1: we're apparently promising to you guys. At the trade off
Speaker 1: for this doing reruns Yeah, mostly reruns. If you want to,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to a Thinking Sideway Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast rerun, just go into a catalog and click on
Speaker 1: any on any episode and it's already it's perfect. Yeah. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: just as a heads up, these episodes are going to
Speaker 1: be shorter. There are summer series. But thanks for your understanding.
Speaker 1: Let's do this thing great. Today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the Bermeha Island. And this was not a suggestion. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found this myself. You went, You went on the
Speaker 1: intertubes and found a mystery on your own. Did Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't believe you did that. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but this is creepy. I don't know if creepy is
Speaker 1: the word. An entire island disappears. It's been interesting mystery,
Speaker 1: to be sure. Yeah. And I'm just going to go
Speaker 1: ahead and say right now that a lot of the
Speaker 1: research that I relied on is not in English, so
Speaker 1: there may be a little bit of weird translation things happening. Um,
Speaker 1: so I apologize in advance if that happens. Ready. So
Speaker 1: Bermeja Island was first mentioned in fifteen thirty nine in
Speaker 1: the Yucatan and adjacent Islands. General is Lario of All
Speaker 1: Islands in the World by Alonso de Santa Cruz of Madrid, Spain.
Speaker 1: He was a cartographer. This publication is generally called the
Speaker 1: General Atlas of all the Islands in the World. Yes, really,
Speaker 1: I think that's the ambitious, ambitious you know, in the hundreds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, all of the islands of all of the world.
Speaker 1: But there you go. This island is or was depending
Speaker 1: in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the Yucatan Peninsula, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: silently sitting there. You're not reacting, though I need reactions. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: in Mexico. So in the Mariners Mirror by Alonso de Chaves,
Speaker 1: which is a different Alonso, who's also a Spanish cartographer.
Speaker 1: Apparently that was like a super super fun name for
Speaker 1: cartographers in Spain. Anyway, he described this island as and
Speaker 1: this is a weird translation. So I'm gonna like try
Speaker 1: and as I go from the tip of Cape Baron Redondo,
Speaker 1: you go almost all the way to the west coast
Speaker 1: for all all, almost all the way the west, about
Speaker 1: seventy miles up and then there's this little arch to
Speaker 1: the north in this place where the y'all, thank you,
Speaker 1: and the island of the Arniss and then also Bermeha,
Speaker 1: so they're like a cluster of islands. It is. It's weird,
Speaker 1: but it's also Google Translate a fifteen hundreds Spanish different.
Speaker 1: It was different, but it's an interesting little So you
Speaker 1: kind of go up the Yucatan and then it's like
Speaker 1: right across. I actually thought maybe it was more of
Speaker 1: a straight line from Havana, Cuba. It's further away, certainly,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a straighter line. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: if you imagine like the north if you mentioned the
Speaker 1: Yucatan Peninsula, the northwest corner, it's it's like pretty much
Speaker 1: like due northwest, and I don't know how many miles
Speaker 1: miles I believe. So when we give you the core gets,
Speaker 1: write them down and then you can just enter that
Speaker 1: directly into the map. Yeah, just write this down, you're ready.
Speaker 1: Just kidding. The coordinates that you will see provided in
Speaker 1: a lot of articles are twenty two degrees in, thirty
Speaker 1: three minutes north, one degrees and twenty two minutes east.
Speaker 1: But when you actually look that up, it's a small
Speaker 1: island in Bangladesh. So that's not right. Yeah, I was choked.
Speaker 1: I I thought you were sending you a snipe hunt.
Speaker 1: I was so confused. Well, it took me a minute too,
Speaker 1: you know. It kind of just plops you down in
Speaker 1: the middle of c and you're like, well, but there's
Speaker 1: an island there on Google Maps, so there must be this.
Speaker 1: It can't be a mystery. And you zoom at, zoom at,
Speaker 1: zoom out, and suddenly there's nothing in English. It's all
Speaker 1: in you know, Arabic text, and you're like, okay, this
Speaker 1: is obviously the wrong place. Yeah, So it turns out
Speaker 1: that it's actually twenty two degrees thirty four minutes six
Speaker 1: seconds north and nine degrees twenty one minutes and fifty
Speaker 1: three point nine seconds west. Turns out decimal points are
Speaker 1: important when it comes to this sort of thing. So
Speaker 1: it's crazy. So go look that up. Those are the coordinates.
Speaker 1: The island was always in the same place on the maps.
Speaker 1: It was always well, well ish, I mean close enough
Speaker 1: for the time. Yeah, that it's it's well assumed that
Speaker 1: there was actually an island there at that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm looking at like, for example, that these two
Speaker 1: maps here, they're both very old, and I have to
Speaker 1: say it, but these maps are really all over the map,
Speaker 1: so different numbers of islands. Some are on this one
Speaker 1: and not on this one. You get you get a
Speaker 1: tolls and you get islands that are there and not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we will talk more about this in theories. Is
Speaker 1: apparently my favorite phrase to talk about ever. But we
Speaker 1: the islands. There are not always islands visible to the
Speaker 1: naked eye that you know, cartographers would be seeing in
Speaker 1: the fifteen six dreds. So, so how big is this
Speaker 1: Meica is about? Was whichever is was a little challenging
Speaker 1: about thirty one square miles um total land, which is
Speaker 1: about eight square kilometers. So it's not nothing. It's not
Speaker 1: a big thing, but it's not huge. But it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I could jump to the other side of this island
Speaker 1: and one fell swoop, you know, and you can walk
Speaker 1: across it in a day, but it would take you
Speaker 1: a full day square miles that's three three three miles
Speaker 1: by ten miles depends on I mean you could walk
Speaker 1: around it. Yeah. The jungle is I guess if there
Speaker 1: is any no, no, no, no, and it's just just sand,
Speaker 1: just say yeah, no, it's kind of rocks and sand.
Speaker 1: Never as far as I have heard, you know, as
Speaker 1: far as I have read at least not heard. There's
Speaker 1: no it's not like trees and things like that. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of sandy sandbar ish. This island Burham was
Speaker 1: documented on maps until at which point an expedition failed
Speaker 1: to locate the island when it was out couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: I had read that it was the Mexican Navy that
Speaker 1: was out on a fishing expedition. I don't know why
Speaker 1: that was what it was, but apparently the Mexican Navy
Speaker 1: goes out in the nineties with late nineties, they were
Speaker 1: going on fishing expeditions and they tried to swing by
Speaker 1: it and found that it wasn't there. I don't know. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: In reality, the last confirmed mapping of Bermeja Island was
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one, and that was in the Geographic
Speaker 1: Atlas of the Mexican Republic. And so that was an
Speaker 1: atlas that was published in Mexico. Correct, yes, yeah, And
Speaker 1: then basically they just kind of they hadn't done any
Speaker 1: kind of cartographic surveys. I just made that word up
Speaker 1: cartography surveys at least for this certain publication, since that
Speaker 1: was the last survey they did to confirm that all
Speaker 1: the islands were where they were. Uh. And then in
Speaker 1: the nineties this became more of a thing, which we're
Speaker 1: about to talk to talk about in the second but
Speaker 1: nine the last confirmed definitely they somebody saw it there time,
Speaker 1: Like I said, Um, Mexican Navy was apparently doing this
Speaker 1: fishing expedition and they yeah, yeah, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't populated or anything. It was just
Speaker 1: kind of the thing. So they I guess they just
Speaker 1: kind of shrugged and thought, well, maybe we're in the
Speaker 1: wrong place or who knows what. Um, and they went
Speaker 1: on their way. They did report it. They couldn't find it,
Speaker 1: but they didn't even reported. They reported the island missing island.
Speaker 1: It's on Charlie Project. Yeah. Yeah, I think it might
Speaker 1: be a yeah, a couple of pictures. They've actually done
Speaker 1: an aging thing. How old it would yeah. Um. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, very much more serious search for Vermeha
Speaker 1: Island uh started and like three agencies took part of
Speaker 1: the survey. Yeah. They can't blame them. Again, you can't
Speaker 1: blame them. Yeah. The big question here, right is, Okay,
Speaker 1: so an island went missing, who cares? Right, really? Who
Speaker 1: cares well. UM, So you probably know, but you may
Speaker 1: not know that the Gulf of Mexico is split between
Speaker 1: the United States and Mexico. UM. There's this whole treaty
Speaker 1: where it says that, you know, nations are supposed to
Speaker 1: be allowed two nautical miles out to do whatever they
Speaker 1: want off of their shores. But obviously the Gulf of
Speaker 1: Mexico that's not necessarily feasible, so it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: It's negotiated, and oftentimes the way that those things are
Speaker 1: negotiated is they'll say, well, this is our furthest for Mexico.
Speaker 1: They would say, this is our furthest north spot that
Speaker 1: we claim as our own land, so let's negotiate from there.
Speaker 1: And then the US would say, okay, well this is
Speaker 1: our southernmost spot that we're claimed land, so let's negotiate
Speaker 1: ate what a good you know, actable term it difference, right,
Speaker 1: And it turns out that Bromeha was the northernmost point
Speaker 1: for Mexico in the Gulf of Mexico that they claimed
Speaker 1: that in that in that specific treaty, which was originally
Speaker 1: negotiated in eight I believe, I believe, I believe I'm
Speaker 1: pulling that number from my memory, so apologies if it's
Speaker 1: wrong anyway. So with the loss of Bromeha, the next
Speaker 1: closest island is like seventy ish mile I mean, it's
Speaker 1: basically the uk tam Peninsula is the next closest bit
Speaker 1: of land that Mexico claims, which means that Mexico has
Speaker 1: lost a sizeable amount of their quote unquote territory within
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico, which also happens to include an
Speaker 1: estimated twenty two point five billion barrels of oil. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of oil down there, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: a big Actually that Burmehan made finance Yeah, that has
Speaker 1: nothing on it. Yeah, totally well with that, we're on
Speaker 1: the theories. Yeah, just I told you its shorts man
Speaker 1: doing it. It's actually kind of a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1: The Yahoo out. So the first theory that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about is um that Burmehan may have just
Speaker 1: never existed. UM. The National Autonomous University of Mexico, which
Speaker 1: is UNAM, is one of the agencies, one of the
Speaker 1: three agencies that in two thousand nine went out and
Speaker 1: used what one article referred to as the most whiz
Speaker 1: bang technology all there, which I thought was an interesting
Speaker 1: phrase but okay attached to but I mean they were
Speaker 1: actually they did actually do a lot of investigation in
Speaker 1: this area. You know, they sent divers down, they used
Speaker 1: all of the radio sonar, thank you sonar technology, all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and basically what they concluded was that there
Speaker 1: had never actually been an island there ever, based on
Speaker 1: their findings. Yeah, you know, one of the things they
Speaker 1: said was that just sizemologic size a malologically yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: based on the way that the Earth's cross days in
Speaker 1: that area, it didn't make sense for their to be
Speaker 1: an island there anyway, which is fair. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: got some maps and you when you look up on
Speaker 1: Google Earth. Um, when you look this up, it shows
Speaker 1: you where the you know, the shelf is there, and
Speaker 1: it does it does make sense. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of violence kind of along the shelf, but this
Speaker 1: island is like not exactly where you would expect, and
Speaker 1: if it is, it drops off quite precipitously. It's like
Speaker 1: two down. Yeah. And then about Nuevo and Karnis the
Speaker 1: two the ones that are closest to this one are
Speaker 1: on the escarpment. That's what's called the Yukatan Escarpment. And
Speaker 1: I've got this this map, I'll describe it. It shows
Speaker 1: to drop off into what's called the six Be Deep
Speaker 1: and and that is the deepest part of the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico. And then I plotted the I plotted the
Speaker 1: island Ireland or Mayha and this right smack in the
Speaker 1: middle of six be Deep. Yeah, it doesn't make down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the yeah, thirty six, Yeah exactly, that's the number that
Speaker 1: I'm confusing with the other number. And bust talk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And why they why they're saying that there couldn't have
Speaker 1: been an island for years, I don't really quite get that.
Speaker 1: It seems like that. I guess they kind of they
Speaker 1: did an analysis on the age of the sea floor
Speaker 1: and decided that in no meaningful way had this sea
Speaker 1: floor been disrupted in terms of like if there had
Speaker 1: been an island that because an island is not I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just making the assumption that you guys know this,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna say it anyway. And island isn't just
Speaker 1: a floating thing. It land that comes up, and so
Speaker 1: it would I don't know necessarily where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: The fifty three hundred years necessarily, I would assume that
Speaker 1: they just they were able to say that that's what
Speaker 1: the age surrounding. Yeah, they gave that number, and so
Speaker 1: I assumed that they just an analysis of the ocean
Speaker 1: floor and said, Okay, this ocean floor was that undred
Speaker 1: years ago. There's not been any major disruption before after
Speaker 1: that time, so there couldn't have ever been an island here,
Speaker 1: which is a fair assumption. Was reasonable. Yeah, you know, actually, um,
Speaker 1: the way the way maps were done, especially in the
Speaker 1: old days, is they relied on accounts from sailors and
Speaker 1: explorers and people like that, and and so somebody could
Speaker 1: have described an island to this to the map makers
Speaker 1: back in Spain being at this particular spot, you know,
Speaker 1: they scribbed a very seriously series and said, oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's about this shape, it's about this size, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's and that's all they had to go with.
Speaker 1: That's how map making work back and then it was
Speaker 1: copy paste, yeah, and that they were copied over and stuff,
Speaker 1: and then and of course one another map was aid.
Speaker 1: Then obviously they took that information off the previous map,
Speaker 1: even though it was erroneous. Probably, and it turns out
Speaker 1: sometimes they put disinformation in the maps back in the
Speaker 1: old days too, Yeah, more than sometimes. Actually that was
Speaker 1: an intentional ling. Yeah, because if you see this cluster, right,
Speaker 1: So if if Spain's enemies, for instance, see this cluster
Speaker 1: of islands in the middle of the Gulf Mexico, they're
Speaker 1: going to think, okay, well there's no way we can
Speaker 1: navigate that because it's really dangerous, so we're not going
Speaker 1: to go over there, which means they're not going to
Speaker 1: challenge Spain's claim to the land around that, which obviously
Speaker 1: Spain claimed that land. And that was a thing that
Speaker 1: was common just across the board everybody whenever they mapped anything,
Speaker 1: they would just say, also, there's like this weird, I
Speaker 1: don't know, coral reef thing here. It's crazy. I know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense that it's in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean, but it's there. Don't try to get through it.
Speaker 1: And that's the other part that it rei Jeff said
Speaker 1: on account second hand account. So somebody could have gotten
Speaker 1: you could have thought, oh, yeah, you know, there was
Speaker 1: there was three of them in that area. There was
Speaker 1: three island e things in that area. Wond In fact,
Speaker 1: there was only two. And then when press. Uh, it was.
Speaker 1: It was And it's like throwing a dart at a map.
Speaker 1: It was right there and there was shaped like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: navigational tools and all that stuff. And but also an
Speaker 1: interesting thing I found out just yesterday because I happen
Speaker 1: to be reading a book about maps at the moment,
Speaker 1: and that modern day map makers actually put disinformation in also.
Speaker 1: You know that what they do is like say, when
Speaker 1: we do this thing called trap streets, which is what
Speaker 1: you do. If you're ACME map company and you're doing
Speaker 1: a map of say London, what you do is you
Speaker 1: put in somewhere in that map, you put a totally
Speaker 1: fictitious street on your map, and you give it, give
Speaker 1: it a unique name. You might name it after your
Speaker 1: dog or something. That's a totally fake street that doesn't
Speaker 1: exist in the real world. And that way, if your
Speaker 1: competitors rip you off, then you have proof of a
Speaker 1: copyright violation. And so that's why everybody they still they
Speaker 1: still are putting disinformation in the apps even today. Do
Speaker 1: they do that on Google? Um, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: a good question. I would have to imagine that Google
Speaker 1: had worked out some kind of agreement with people at
Speaker 1: least in the beginning. Google is mapping everything on their
Speaker 1: freaking own at this point, so they probably aren't as
Speaker 1: reliant anymore on those old maps. But but I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's well, hell, you remember map Quest. That thing
Speaker 1: used to be wrong all the time, And now it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if it wasn't that they were taking
Speaker 1: it way too far because the Internet was scary, or
Speaker 1: if they just really were that crappy. Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to tell. I'm probably crappy. Google is. I mean they
Speaker 1: are literally mapping everything. And there's this game called Geo Guesser,
Speaker 1: which is super awesome. They just PLoP you down in
Speaker 1: street view in Google and you have to guess where
Speaker 1: in the world you are. Really do you get to
Speaker 1: do you get to move around? You can move around, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, all the signs are mostly blurred out.
Speaker 1: But you know the I was playing the other day
Speaker 1: and they ploted me to out in the middle of
Speaker 1: literally a dirt road in like Spain, and I was
Speaker 1: like clicking through and you're just like, there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: It's just a dirt road. There's not even houses or anything,
Speaker 1: and you're just like, well, I guess I'm just I
Speaker 1: have to guess, but they're mapping stuff like that. It's insane.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a fun game. I want to pay fun. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well they're doing all kinds of crazy stuff, like with
Speaker 1: street view. Joe and I before you got here today,
Speaker 1: we're looking at a map of here in Portland, and
Speaker 1: as Joe was panning around the Streetview's like wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: go back, go back, And I can actually see the
Speaker 1: reflection of the person who has had the camera, and
Speaker 1: they were on a bicycle. You couldn't get a car
Speaker 1: into the area. And they're like, okay, we'll figure out
Speaker 1: how to bike mount a bunch of cameras and makes
Speaker 1: somebody ride them through there. And it just happened to
Speaker 1: catch it in the image they have they have people once.
Speaker 1: I mean there's yeah, they're called ostriches anyway, we kind
Speaker 1: of So I just wanted to say one other thing
Speaker 1: about the history of maps, and then that is back
Speaker 1: in the old old days, um maps were hot property,
Speaker 1: was incredibly valuable intelligence, and so in the countries went
Speaker 1: do great lengths to keep them, keep their all their
Speaker 1: maps secret. And they were they weren't cheap to make.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like you just made a thousand copies because
Speaker 1: what the hell. Yeah, you know, it was a scribe
Speaker 1: or a cryptographer sitting there hand creating these things over
Speaker 1: and over. And I mean that's where inaccuracies come from.
Speaker 1: It was part of an old manuscripts. Letters are changed,
Speaker 1: drawings are wrong. It happens, yeah, absolutely, yeah. But so yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole story of maps is interesting. I mean but
Speaker 1: back in the day they were they were considered more
Speaker 1: worth their weight in gold and some Yeah, absolutely accurate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean it's it is totally possible in my
Speaker 1: mind that I just never existed. I'm pretty sure it didn't. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: but we have talked about their to the theory. There's
Speaker 1: some other really interesting ones. Our next one is that
Speaker 1: it just migrated, which is just like the yeah, and
Speaker 1: it'll be back back. I mean, winters here, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a long winter, h didn't. I mean they sent
Speaker 1: the white ravens, so I know, winters here, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a while and then it'll come back and it'll
Speaker 1: be fine. Right. Yeah, So we're just saying that it
Speaker 1: migrated due to like continental shelf shifting. It's dumb, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's uh sank or global warming, which is which is
Speaker 1: a fair thing to say. I mean, based on the
Speaker 1: evidence that we've already presented, there's not an island just
Speaker 1: you know, hanging out a couple hundred feet under water.
Speaker 1: But during these renegotiations of the marine border, um, that happened.
Speaker 1: They happened in I believe between Mexico and the United States.
Speaker 1: Foreign Ministry legal advisor told senators that Vermeha Island was
Speaker 1: actually just like a hundred and fifty feet or underwater. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think the oceans have been rising that fast.
Speaker 1: I don't think so either. UM. I think that was
Speaker 1: obviously a lie to try to convince senators that it
Speaker 1: was okay to continue negotiating based on that land claim.
Speaker 1: You know, again it was it was important because it
Speaker 1: did reinforce the claim to that area, which contains a
Speaker 1: bunch of oil. But there are things though. There there
Speaker 1: are things what they're called disappearing islands. There's one actually,
Speaker 1: there's one island in that area that's literally named disappearing
Speaker 1: island because they're so low. They just sit right on
Speaker 1: the surface, so they're really only seen when the tide
Speaker 1: is really really low or you know, kind of low.
Speaker 1: But when it's high tide, the islands disappear completely. But
Speaker 1: those islands are all on the Yukatanas scarp. They are yeah,
Speaker 1: and they are much smaller. They're not, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: one square miles. So the thing that I wondered about
Speaker 1: with this, because we're we're on this you know, the
Speaker 1: island sank. We're back to Atlantis, by the way, but
Speaker 1: we found Atlantis. It's at twenty two degrees no um.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that what I was looking
Speaker 1: at is when I was looking at the escarpment and
Speaker 1: zooming in, these coordinates may are based on a very
Speaker 1: old map that is, as we've already said, probably fraught
Speaker 1: with inaccuracies. But what I'm wondering is if that island
Speaker 1: might have actually existed, was farther south, so it was
Speaker 1: closer to just the the edge. Let's say that that
Speaker 1: area does collapse, because that if you look at that map,
Speaker 1: you can see how there's areas where it's very it's
Speaker 1: a very subtle slope, and then there's very steep slopes.
Speaker 1: So it could have been that there was some kind
Speaker 1: of seismic activity and it just sort of flaked off
Speaker 1: and over the course of the next two hundred years,
Speaker 1: crap is stacked up on top of it, and so
Speaker 1: it's not as obvious. Because I don't know that this
Speaker 1: that the you name actually sent divers down along that
Speaker 1: entire thing. I have to believe they probably didn't. So
Speaker 1: that makes me think that they may not have seen
Speaker 1: the signs of something that had, based on a seismic event, collapsed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although that's, uh, that's a pretty huge chunk of land
Speaker 1: to have just sort of like flake off and go
Speaker 1: tumbling down the hillside. I mean, I said, but I
Speaker 1: see your theory. I mean, that occurred to me too well.
Speaker 1: But but then again, we're all you're saying, that's a
Speaker 1: huge chunk of land, but again we're also basing the
Speaker 1: size of this thing on a very old, potentially incorrect an. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to I choose to believe. I
Speaker 1: guess that you now did their due diligence and wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, just saying well whatever, Yeah, it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like things were disturbed. It's probably fine. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would assume that they sent divers down, and I think
Speaker 1: I think if they would would have been biased in
Speaker 1: one direction or the other, it would have been towards
Speaker 1: the other way. I would agree with that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that it's strongly a Mexican national sentiment is that
Speaker 1: Burmeha existed and something else happened to it, so it
Speaker 1: would be more it would be more in their favor
Speaker 1: and more in their nature maybe to say, yeah, there
Speaker 1: was an island there and it just something happened. Um,
Speaker 1: or there's still an island there. It's probably still an
Speaker 1: island there. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just invisibility cloak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: freaking aquaman again, isn't it. Yeah it is. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: our next and last theory is the one, Okay, my
Speaker 1: last is the one that I think is the most interesting,
Speaker 1: um and maybe even like second most likely even in
Speaker 1: my mind. Uh. And it's that either the CIA or
Speaker 1: the Mexican government or both colluded just blew the heck
Speaker 1: out of Burmeha Island and obliterated it. We never like
Speaker 1: that stupid island. Let's just get rid of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And I don't know, I'll be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't know why. The theory is that the CIA did it,
Speaker 1: because the CIA is evil and does everything. Yeah, that's why.
Speaker 1: And this theory does seem a little insane until you
Speaker 1: actually start talking about some vaguely interested related details. Understandably,
Speaker 1: Mexico was not super stoked to find out that their
Speaker 1: quote unquote north most claim was gone, so they decided
Speaker 1: that an investigation needed to take place, which is fair
Speaker 1: because realistically, either one party was lying, right, either the
Speaker 1: USA blew the island to pieces, or the island never existed, right,
Speaker 1: I mean those are the two tech kind of right, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: based based on So either Mexico was lying about it
Speaker 1: ever having existed, or the USA was lying about blowing
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah, because we love to blow of islance.
Speaker 1: We do. Actually, we're really good at it. And I
Speaker 1: don't think I don't think I could say that Mexico
Speaker 1: was lying. I mean, that's the the island goes back
Speaker 1: hundreds of years in plants that I was like, before
Speaker 1: the existence of Mexico, people were putting an island in
Speaker 1: that spot. But that it could have been a really
Speaker 1: convenient that the Mexican government would have said, Okay, we
Speaker 1: know this island doesn't actually exist, but it's on the map,
Speaker 1: so we're just going to say it exists to extend
Speaker 1: our claim. What you're saying, it might have been what
Speaker 1: you're saying about lying then, Okay, yeah, apparently, um, some
Speaker 1: senators did discuss for about ten minutes UM in two
Speaker 1: thousands from Mexico. Yeah, yeah, there was some congressional hearing
Speaker 1: about this whole thing. They discussed it for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: And there's a claim that all of the audio from
Speaker 1: that hearing has just disappeared, doesn't in the again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they probably just taped over the tapes. Well,
Speaker 1: the reason that they were talking about in two thousand
Speaker 1: is because they were finishing up renegotiations on this whole
Speaker 1: land claim thing, and Congress did fail to speak up
Speaker 1: about the fact that their navy had apparently discovered that
Speaker 1: the island didn't exist anymore. I mean, they knew in um,
Speaker 1: and so the tape disappearing would maybe suggest that they said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we know that the island isn't there anymore, but we
Speaker 1: should just keep saying the islands there because the oil, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the negotiations started in so even
Speaker 1: when they started these renegotiations, they the navy had said
Speaker 1: this island isn't here anymore, but they started pretending to
Speaker 1: believe this still was. Yeah, they seemed to with with
Speaker 1: like one exception, there's one. There was one senator his
Speaker 1: name was it was Jose angel Um French Jello, and
Speaker 1: he was the chair of the Foreign Relations committee at
Speaker 1: the time in in the Mexican parliament. So negotiations, negotiations
Speaker 1: started to renegotiate this whole border thing, and Concello said
Speaker 1: that there was a secret plan for the Mexican government
Speaker 1: to give a ton of exploration rights to S oil companies,
Speaker 1: which only makes sense, which only makes sense, right of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that the island disappearing was probably part of that
Speaker 1: plan he was going to give. They were going to
Speaker 1: give the rights to the U S oil companies to explore,
Speaker 1: and once they found oil, the US would say, well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that Mexico doesn't even have this island,
Speaker 1: so we should renegotiate, and oh, by the way, are
Speaker 1: our people found oil there, so it's our oil, so
Speaker 1: ha ha, Mexico, you don't have claim to any of
Speaker 1: this is apparently his thinking. Essentially, Mexican officials were bribed
Speaker 1: by US oil companies and that you know, eventually that
Speaker 1: the island was decimated and that eventually the U S
Speaker 1: would be able to swoop in and say your land
Speaker 1: claim is bogus, and also we're going to have all
Speaker 1: the oil go big oil. Yeah oil. Well, and you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of seems like the ramblings of a crazy person.
Speaker 1: And tel you find out that Concello actually died in
Speaker 1: August of in a car crash um in which his
Speaker 1: driver wasn't even injured. Mm hmm, that can happen. What
Speaker 1: about the bullet holes? So yeah, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: the so, what happened is a truck turned left in
Speaker 1: front of his car, the car collided. It killed him
Speaker 1: as the passenger, but his driver was reportedly totally uninjured.
Speaker 1: He was probably in the back seat, he was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Concello was in the back sea Yeah, so probably point
Speaker 1: I probably the passenger side, which would explain why this
Speaker 1: man was not but okay, totally. But it's it's a
Speaker 1: little I mean, you have to admit there's at least
Speaker 1: a tiny voice in your brain that says, okay, but
Speaker 1: it's a little weird that the one person who spoke
Speaker 1: out about this. Yeah, it's it's weird that he did.
Speaker 1: He died, But as far as his driver surviving, that's
Speaker 1: not that that weird. Because if you're if you're gonna, like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna like have this guy whacked via an
Speaker 1: auto accident, you don't really care about his driver, you know,
Speaker 1: So that's that was just a flu wasn't hit. But
Speaker 1: it's still kind of It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't want to believe that this is
Speaker 1: actually happening, but a little bit in my brain, I
Speaker 1: think it's really convenient timing. Well, that's probably it's convenient.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I don't think that this is some kind
Speaker 1: of conspiracy, but I can see why people do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the same thing. What was it, Princess
Speaker 1: die and the driver, you know, he was the first
Speaker 1: one to die, and everybody of course pointed out that
Speaker 1: he was the man who had done it. But if
Speaker 1: he hit threw some fluke survived, then the conspiracy would
Speaker 1: have just been on fire. But that's the same thinging.
Speaker 1: It's like the guy who is quote unquote responsible for
Speaker 1: the vehicle somehow survived. It's an accident happens, uh Well,
Speaker 1: and then I guess the little icing on the cake
Speaker 1: on this theory is that obviously an island of that
Speaker 1: size does not get a glitter rated without both parties
Speaker 1: being aware of it. So either Mexico bombed the crap
Speaker 1: out of their own island and the you know, and
Speaker 1: the US knew that that had happened, or the US
Speaker 1: bombed the crap out of Mexico's island and Mexico obviously
Speaker 1: new too, because that's not the sort of thing that
Speaker 1: just happened. No, it's it's hard, it's it's definitely hard
Speaker 1: to keep something like that secret. Yeah, how far how
Speaker 1: far away from the coast is this island? Again? It
Speaker 1: was hundred miles seventy I mean that that would be
Speaker 1: a really really really far south for a US warship
Speaker 1: to be just without Mexico. Yeah, and so that's why
Speaker 1: people say it had to have been a conspiracy between
Speaker 1: the two governments. Well, and here, but here's the reason
Speaker 1: I don't buy it. And again this is this is
Speaker 1: another map holding my hot little hand of the Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico, and it shows the six be deep there. Again,
Speaker 1: I say, as I said earlier, down or almost twelve
Speaker 1: thou feet, So the island would have had to have
Speaker 1: been an underwater mountain, almost as big as Mount Hood.
Speaker 1: And you see if you look here, the sea floor
Speaker 1: there is pretty much flat, um, which means that's a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of earth and rock to move. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've been an amazing amount and do it covertly. You
Speaker 1: got again. I mean, it's like not possible. Really, I
Speaker 1: agree with you. Duh. Have you never been to the
Speaker 1: carnival and seen somebody on stilt? It was an island
Speaker 1: on stilt. So it just fell over, Okay, I fall down,
Speaker 1: go boom. Yeah, okay, I told you buy that. Okay, honestly,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you my theory. Yeah, you have a theory,
Speaker 1: and Steve as a theory. Okay, well, okay, Mexico just
Speaker 1: displaced it. It'll turn up one of these days. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll show up. Yeah yeah, they'll they'll find at the
Speaker 1: back of a drawer or maybe in the back of
Speaker 1: the refrigerator spring cleaning. Yeah. Um. So my theory is
Speaker 1: kind of a civil one, and that is that this island.
Speaker 1: Island has been mapped twice. Okay. So here's what I
Speaker 1: the problem with this whole thing when I was looking
Speaker 1: at it is like we've talked about the escarpment, that
Speaker 1: there's no way that an island can be sported there.
Speaker 1: But if you go about twenty to five miles due east,
Speaker 1: you'll run into Scorpion Reef. And Scorpion Reef is a
Speaker 1: is literally a reef, but there is one kind of
Speaker 1: small island dish land mass in it. And I'm guessing
Speaker 1: this thing is at the most like four or five
Speaker 1: miles across, but it's roughly shaped like our island is.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if it got found and then somebody
Speaker 1: else recounted that reef but recounted the size wrong and
Speaker 1: moved it, which is why the damn thing never shows up,
Speaker 1: because if you look at that thing, it kind of
Speaker 1: the old maps are hard to tell the shape of
Speaker 1: the island with. I get that it's kind of kid
Speaker 1: To me, it's almost kind of like kidney shaped. But
Speaker 1: it could be that that's why, is that it was
Speaker 1: somebody called this one little bit of rock or sand
Speaker 1: in Scorpion Reef, that island, and then when they went
Speaker 1: to look forward for reels, just kidding there. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess there's the other possibility is that they saw it
Speaker 1: on a super low tide. I don't know what Scorpion
Speaker 1: Reef really looks like on a super low tide with
Speaker 1: a slightly lower water table. I wonder if it's all
Speaker 1: connected underneath, so it looks like it's very shallow between them.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if it looks like one larger mass,
Speaker 1: because I mean Burmeha is solidly the largest island in
Speaker 1: that area according to the maps um, So I guess
Speaker 1: it would be possible if Scorpion Island, Reef whatever were
Speaker 1: to be seen as an entire and an extremely low tie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But here's the other problem with this whole. They were
Speaker 1: blowing the island up to to pull Mexico's back claim
Speaker 1: to the sea back. This island is this reef with
Speaker 1: this little island on. It is twenty miles away and
Speaker 1: only a tad bit farther south, like maybe a couple
Speaker 1: of miles further south, and it's owned by Mexico. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know they didn't lose anything. I know that you
Speaker 1: are saying that, but I also have like read the
Speaker 1: actual treaty documents, and for whatever reason, this is like
Speaker 1: a huge deal. So I don't know how they're maybe okay,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the treaty has a minimum land mass
Speaker 1: requirement or something like that, and that's why this island
Speaker 1: is so important. And what's at the reef doesn't count.
Speaker 1: But well I didn't even I don't even know, because
Speaker 1: I mean, it probably has to be solid land and
Speaker 1: not just a reef. Yeah, well there is there's one
Speaker 1: bit of solid land there that I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: in my estimation, it would mean that you would have
Speaker 1: to have land that was settle able, right, but mayhow
Speaker 1: wasn't settleable? It could have been. It was enough. It
Speaker 1: was a it was a hook of sand. I mean,
Speaker 1: you said there was nothing on it, So that's not settleable. Well,
Speaker 1: you can build a house there. It's just not going
Speaker 1: to stay standing. But there it's a big enough that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm moving to Scorpion reef. Yeah, so, I mean it's
Speaker 1: I think it probably just never existed. It was a
Speaker 1: mapping air. You think it is just you know, somebody
Speaker 1: dripped ink on the on the map. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting next to it. It is interesting that it happened
Speaker 1: to coincide with you know, twenty two point five billion
Speaker 1: barrels of oil disputed between Mexico and the United States.
Speaker 1: That's a lucky break happen. Well, we've got better used
Speaker 1: for that oil. Anyway. You guys have any other theories
Speaker 1: you're done already, already did mine. Let's see the island
Speaker 1: ran away to join the circus. Let's just yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a new the island ordered a new social Security card. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you want to see some of the links,
Speaker 1: we'll try I'll try to post only English one. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to see some of the links to
Speaker 1: some of our research, you can find that on our website.
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Speaker 1: been said, we're going to go ahead and balm on
Speaker 1: out of here. I don't have any good bad puns,
Speaker 1: so it's just bye bye. I'm gonna go have a
Speaker 1: Mexican beer. Bye, guys.