Now, a new report suggests an explanation for the holes, claiming it could also be linked to the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle is a region some people say exists in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico; many others dispute its existence. [Gallery: Lost in the Bermuda Triangle (Photos)] 
 
 But regardless of whether the Bermuda Triangle exists, the idea that methane release could sink ships holds some water, scientists say. Methane is normally solid under the crushing pressures of the deep sea, but chunks of the icelike substance can break off and form gas bubbles that rise to the surface. “Sonar surveys of the ocean floor in the North Sea (between Britain and continental Europe) have revealed large quantities of methane hydrates and eruption sites,” May and Monaghan wrote in their report, published in the American Journal of Physics.  Methane bubbles from the sea floor could, in theory, sink ships and may explain the odd disappearances of some vessels, Australian researchers reported Tuesday.
– A new discovery has revived an old theory about ocean water gobbling up ships in the Bermuda Triangle—if, that is, the Bermuda Triangle even exists. Researchers from the Arctic University of Norway say they've spotted large craters apparently created by methane buildups off Norway's coast, Atlas Obscura reports. "Multiple giant craters exist on the sea floor in an area in the west-central Barents Sea ... and are probably a cause of enormous blowouts of gas," they tell the Sunday Times. "The crater area is likely to represent one of the largest hotspots for shallow marine methane release in the Arctic." Other experts have said gas blowouts from such craters, which measure 150 feet deep and up to a half-mile wide in Norway, could explain the sinking of ships in a region between Puerto Rico, Miami, and Bermuda dubbed the Bermuda Triangle. "There is a version that the Bermuda Triangle is a consequence of gas hydrates reactions," Russian scientist Igor Yeltsov said last year, per the New Zealand Herald. Ice-like underwater methane can break away and form gas that bubbles to the surface, Live Science explained in 2014; Yeltsov says it erupts "like a nuclear reaction, producing huge amounts of gas." Research has shown that such eruptions could sink sea vessels, as NBC News reported in 2003, and this YouTube video appears to confirm that. But it's not clear these blowouts even occur in the Bermuda Triangle, the Guardian notes. And skeptics say the Gulf Stream's many tropical storms would better account for the Triangle's lost ships and planes. The very term "Bermuda Triangle" is questionable: Still dismissed by the US Navy, it was invented in a dramatic 1964 article that probed the "mysterious menace" behind ships and airplanes lost in the area. (A teacher may have found "the key" to finding Amelia Earhart's plane.)