The Bermuda triangle

Third, it is percieved that the area may contain a lot of unstable clathrate, that could convert the ocean to a bubble stream locally, in which ships would sink. See this page

No magic, just plain physics.

Clathrate gun kills Pleistocene mega fauna.

The great gas attack: Permian Mass Extinction Theory

Gulf experiment seeks to explain the Bermuda Triangle

The Bermuda triangle

Earth 'shook off' ancient warming

Solving the mystery of Venus

It's a load of gas

Sonic boom? Earthquake? Big bang theories abound

So what's left?One theory batted around was that it could be "Seneca Guns," a folk explanation used to describe unexplained booms often associated with the coast of North Carolina. Such booms have been experienced in North America since before the Age of Flight, some as early as the 18th century.

Methane clathrate hydrate is a form of water ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure. Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the solar system where temperatures are low and water ice common, extremely large deposits of methane clathrates have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of Earth. Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere, and they occur both in deep sedimentary structures, and as outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from depth along geological faults, followed by precipitation, or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. [continued]

The "Bermuda or Devil's Triangle" is an imaginary area located off the southeastern Atlantic coast of the United States, which is noted for a high incidence of unexplained losses of ships, small boats, and aircraft. The apexes of the triangle are generally accepted to be Bermuda, Miami, Fla., and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

First, the "Devil's Triangle" is one of the two places on earth that a magnetic compass does point towards true north.

An area called the "Devil's Sea" by Japanese and Filipino seamen, located off the east coast of Japan, also exhibits the same magnetic characteristics. It is also known for its mysterious disappearances.

.... Today, methane hydrates have been detected around most continental margins. Around the United States, large deposits have been identified and studied in Alaska, the west coast from California to Washington, the east coast, including the Blake Ridge offshore of the Carolinas, and in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed its most detailed assessment of U.S. gas hydrate resources. The USGS study estimated the in-place gas resource within the gas hydrates of the United States to range from 112,000 trillion cubic feet to 676,000 trillion cubic feet, with a mean value of 320,000 trillion cubic feet of gas. Subsequent refinements of the data in 1997 using information from the Ocean Drilling Program have suggested that the mean should be adjusted slightly downward, to around 200,000 trillion cubic feet -- still larger by several orders of magnitude than previously thought and dwarfing the estimated 1,400 trillion cubic feet of conventional recovered gas resources and reserves in the United States.

Worldwide, estimates of the natural gas potential of methane hydrates approach 400 million trillion cubic feet -- a staggering figure compared to the 5,000 trillion cubic feet that make up the world's currently known gas reserves.

This huge potential, alone, warrants a new look at advanced technologies that might one day reliably and cost-effectively detect and produce natural gas from methane hydrates.[continued]

Tapping Ocean Methane Deposits
INEEL Microbiologist Joins Japanese on Expedition to Tap Marine-methane Deposits...

...The crew drilled into a marine shelf region 60 kilometers off Japan's Omae Zaki peninsula over the Nankai Trough through 950 meters of water. The area is known to contain large amounts of gas hydrate—methane gas molecules trapped in lattices of ice—and may also contain extractable natural gas in formations considerably deeper than the hydrate deposits. For the Japanese, the purpose of the expedition was to explore the possibilities of harvesting the fuel. [continued]

Algeria has the fifth-largest reserves of natural gas in the world and is the second-largest gas exporter