The Most Mysterious Lakes In The World

Lake Berryessa

Lake Berryessa reservoir, located 75 miles north of San Francisco, was a pretty unremarkable lake up until 2017 when a 72-foot-wide hole seemingly opened up out of nowhere, dramatically sucking in the contents of the surrounding lake with surprising power. Word of this giant unexplained potential sinkhole began to spread, and locals rushed to the site of the reservoir to look on in horror at this bizarre phenomenon. While many worried about the origins of this huge inverted fountain and what potential seismic activity below the surface could have caused it to open up, it turned out the hole is actually just a manmade glory hole designed to drain the reservoir and keep it from overflowing, while also acting as a spillway to the nearby dam.

The reason behind its sudden appearance was actually a result of a huge amount of rainfall following a long ten-year period of drought which had rendered the glory hole useless up until 2017. In fact, images that show the lake during this long dry spell clearly show the huge hole,it just wasn’t quite as noticeable until it was turned into a lake-guzzling vortex.More..

Jellyfish Lake

If a shark-infested lake wasn’t enough to prove that some places just aren’t worth a risky dip then take a look at Pulau’s Jellyfish Lake, which, as its name suggests, is home to a whopping population of over a million of these little stingers. Surprisingly, the world-renowned jellyfish lake is a popular destination, and hundreds of tourists are brave enough to enter the water every year to swim alongside these fascinating creatures. Thankfully, the various species in this lake, including the Golden Jellyfish and the Moon Jellyfish, are not reported to have strong enough stinging cells to seriously harm a human, so swimming is permitted, but special care and a $100 pass are still required.

In 1998, though, there was a mysterious decline in the jellyfish in the lake, and by the end of that year, the medusa species had completely vanished altogether. Baffled scientists were eventually able to identify this rapid decline as a direct result of the El Niño weather event which dramatically raised the water’s temperature, a healthy annual increase in the jellyfish population has been identified under moderate weather conditions.More..