Scientists thought these monster waves were myth. Now they’re racing to understand them
for the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race tragedy – in those wild waters, six lives and five boats were lost., the inverse of a rogue wave where the depth of the trough can be twice as big as its crest . “So they can be even steeper than the rogue wave, and very dangerous too – this great hole opening suddenly in the sea,” he says.
At certain hotspots, scientists can see this in action. The most infamous is off the southeast coast of Africa, says van Duyn, where the fast-moving Agulhas current collides with waters from the Indian and Southern oceans. This can have an amplifying effect on the waves, making them steeper, like focusing light from a magnifying glass.
This linear theory does not explain many elements of waves, though, including why some rogues form on seemingly calm waters in the middle of nowhere. “And we know waves don’t act in a nice linear way,” where the size of a rogue is in perfect proportion to the waves it came out of, says Akhmediev. That’s why he and many mathematicians are increasingly looking to the strange world of quantum physics for an explanation. “All particles act like waves, after all, even on a subatomic level,” he says.
Ideally, he says, you’d want to sail head-on into such a wave. Being hit from the side risks a capsizing. Of course, going bow-first up that steep cliff of water comes with its own dangers. If the wave is big enough, the drag could tear the ship apart. That’s why ships wrecked in such disasters are often found in pieces, even with holes punched through their hulls by the water.
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