The disappearance of Mexico's $22 billion island explained

Mexico has found itself in a bizarre conundrum. They currently sit along the lucrative Gulf of Mexico, home to tens of billions of barrels of oil just waiting to be extracted. And they thought they had the exclusive rights to this oil, because they owned a small island about 125 miles northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula. But here's the problem. Mexico can't find it. So how does an island just disappear? And more importantly, why is Mexico so desperate for it to exist? I'm Jeff and this is the disappearing geographic story behind Bermeja. Bermeja Island has been showing up on maps for hundreds of years, and its supposed location has been both consistent and specific. Supposedly, this tiny island lies at the specific coordinates 22 degrees 33 north and 91 degrees 22 west, northwest of the waterlogged mangrove coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. That's just along the edge of the Campeche Bank, a stretch of continental shelf that stabs northward into the Gulf of Mexico. Now, the Gulf is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that juts into the southeastern part of North America. And it truly is an amazing place, from its warm sunlit surface waters to its briny abyssal depths, full of all manner of living things. It's also almost completely encircled by land. At its east end, where the Gulf meets the rest of the Atlantic, it's hemmed in by Florida stretching down from the north, Yucatan reaching up from the south, and Cuba sitting right in the middle. The Gulf only has two lifelines connecting it to the rest of the Atlantic, the narrow passages between these three landmasses, the Yucatan Channel and the Straits of Florida. That actually has enormous consequences for the rest of the world. Warm tropical water flowing in through the Yucatan Channel and out through the Straits of Florida creates the fearsome loop current, which helps power the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream then brings warm water far northeast across the North Atlantic, granting Europe a far warmer climate than it would have otherwise. And without the Gulf Stream, the entire global climate system would be almost unrecognizable. But that's just the start of how the Gulf shapes the modern world. It's not just the water currents that make the Gulf of Mexico unique. There's also its huge continental shelves. On the whole, the Gulf of Mexico has an average depth of about 5,300 feet. But along the coast, there are sprawling continental shelves where the water's only about 100 feet deep. Particularly west of Florida, south of Louisiana and north of the Yucatan Peninsula. These continental shelves are downright colossal, stretching out over 100 miles into the Gulf in some places. These relatively shallow areas are littered with vibrant reefs that team with sea life, from shrimp and oysters to fish of all descriptions, which fuel the economies and feed the people of Cuba, Eastern Mexico and the U.S. Gulf Coast. And it's these continental shelves that are also excellent places to drill for oil. You see, the Gulf of Mexico has an enormous amount of oil and gas buried under its seafloor. At least tens of billions of barrels worth. Mexico, the United States and, to a lesser extent, Cuba all rely on those deposits. And offshore oil rigs have been burrowing deep into the seabed to tap them for more than 60 years now. The continental shelf off the U.S. Gulf Coast is covered by a virtual forest of oil rigs. While Mexico has its own scattered offshore oil fields in the Bay of Campeche, the southwestern lobe of the Gulf. And this is important because, for Mexico, the oil industry is a huge part of the country's economy, generating 7% of all Mexico's export revenue and 33% of all public sector income. To put it mildly, Mexico is entirely dependent on oil revenue. All of this drilling is done within the U.S. and Mexico's exclusive economic zones. These are the stretches of sea within 200 nautical miles of a country's coast, in which that country has the exclusive right to fish, drill for oil and extract other natural resources. The exclusive economic zone of the U.S., Mexico and Cuba divide almost the entire Gulf of Mexico between them, except for two relatively small patches out in the middle of the Gulf. These are called the Western and Eastern Donut Holes. And they're considered international waters, which makes drilling there legally dubious. There have been talks between the U.S. and Mexico to carve up the Western Hole, but as it stands right now, the Donut Holes are a no-go zone for oil drilling. That is, unless the U.S. or Mexico comes up with a new island they can use to expand their exclusive economic zone. That's why Mexico was so invested in finding Bermeja Island. It could extend Mexico's exclusive economic zone far into the Western Donut Hole, giving Mexico access to an estimated 22.5 billion barrels worth of black gold. Or at least it could, if Mexico could find it. There are other small islands across the Compeche Bank, off the Yucatan Peninsula, which Mexico already uses to extend its exclusive economic zone. Collectively, they're known as the Compeche Bank Archipelago. A lot of these are little more than glorified sandbars or reefs that peek just over the sea surface a tiny bit. Some are just patches of sand, while others have steamy tropical forests in their interior. Small, but still full of life. Either way, not many actually have people living on them. And just east of where Bermeja Island is supposed to be, there's the Alacranes Islands, a mostly underwater atoll with five tiny islands poking above the waves. Only one of them, Isla Perez, is actually inhabited by humans. And only barely. All there is is a tiny port, a lighthouse, and a few other buildings that serve a detachment of the Mexican Navy. But Mexican land is Mexican land, and each little island can potentially expand Mexico's territorial waters massively. Of course, when we're talking about islands this small, it can be easy to lose track of one. Or alternatively, it's also easy to not notice when one of them just isn't even there. So, how did the island originally appear on maps in the first place? Hey, I've been building an amazing geography community over at thebyte.co. And for a limited time, you can get a free month of ad and sponsor-free videos from all of my channels, exclusive articles, and a free digital world map of the Coppin climate system over on thebyte.co. Just click the link in the description below or scan this QR code, and I'll see you there. The story of Bermeja Island starts back in the early 16th century, a time when Spanish colonizers were scouring the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico for new lands to sink their claws into. One of them, the Spanish cartographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, first charted Bermeja Island on a map of the Yucatan coast and the Campeche archipelago in 1539. The next year, in 1540, another cartographer, Alonso de Chavez, included the island on his own maps, this time with specific coordinates. His account claimed that the islands looked blondish or reddish, or in Spanish, Bermejo. That description suggests the island was little more than a pile of sand, or a rocky outcrop sticking out of the ocean a little. And supposedly, it was about 30 square miles in size. It can't be understated. At that size, this was quite noticeable. It would be hard to miss and even harder to ignore. With that said, just because we have a vague description of the island doesn't mean anyone actually went there. And there's no record to suggest that Bermeja Island ever received any visitors. But that didn't stop Bermeja Island from popping up on map after map. An 1846 American map of Mexico made by Henry Tanner shows the island right in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, as do other maps from the 19th and even 20th centuries. Bermeja Island was also listed in official Mexican government inventories starting in the late 1800s, which claimed it as Mexican territory. But in all that time, nobody actually paid a visit to Bermeja Island. That brief atlas entry from 1540 is the only description of the island in a primary source. All the maps that have Bermeja Island on it just copied it over from older maps. Everyone just assumed Bermeja Island existed. But in 1997, Mexico's Secretariat of the Navy noticed that nobody had actually checked up on Bermeja Island in a while and they decided to make sure that it was actually there. Their expedition scoured 300 square miles around the island's supposed coordinates and all it found was open ocean. A naval report following up on the expedition concluded that Bermeja Island probably never existed. Most likely, those 16th century Spanish cartographers just made a mapping error. A Spanish research vessel performed a follow-up survey later that year and they came to the same conclusion. But despite all the evidence, the Mexican government kept insisting that Bermeja Island existed for years after the fact. The Mexican Interior Ministry's 1998 registry still listed it as an active territory. But even while Mexico was still claiming Bermeja Island existed, it also ignored it during negotiations with the U.S. over oil drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico. The 2000 Continental Shelf Boundary Treaty used the Alacranes Islands, not Bermeja Island, as the northern anchor point for Mexico's exclusive economic zone, which effectively dropped Mexico's claim over a big chunk of the western donut hole. Clearly, at least some parts of the Mexican government knew that Bermeja Island wasn't there anymore. But it would still be a few years before the government publicly admitted it. In 2008, six Mexican senators raised the issue publicly. They demanded the executive branch explain why Bermeja Island was still on the official maps, despite being reported missing, and they wanted the matter clarified once and for all. The next year, the National Autonomous University of Mexico launched a survey mission to settle the issue. This survey expedition was a lot more comprehensive than the 1997 one. It covered more than 25,000 square miles, performed extensive aerial surveys, and used ultrasound scans to survey the ocean down to 1,548 feet below the surface. They found nothing. Not Bermeja Island, nor any trace of it. Just a few months later, the Mexican Navy ran its own survey, again, and came to the same conclusion. After these expeditions, Mexico finally conceded what it had already known for about a decade. Bermeja Island did not exist, but the debate over the island had brought it into the limelight, and Bermeja Island stuck around in the popular discourse anyway. There was still one question people wanted answered. Was Bermeja Island completely fictional, or had it once been real? And if it had, what happened to it? Let's get this out of the way right now. There's more than one way to lose an island, especially small, low-lying islands like the ones in the Campeche Bank. Sea level rise, earthquakes, or erosion could cause tiny islands to sink beneath the waves, especially over a period of a few hundred years. In the Solomon Islands alone, the islands of Rapita, Rojoca, and Cacatina are all examples of former islands that have all been completely submerged in the last few decades. Those weren't just glorified sandbars either. Some were large enough that they had whole communities living on them before they sank beneath the waves. So could that have been the fate of Bermeja Island? There's a hole in that explanation. Submerged islands usually aren't underwater by all that much. Remember those ultrasound scans the 2009 expedition performed? Those would have found Bermeja Island if it was just another victim of sea level rise. That's led some people in Mexico to think the disappearance of Bermeja Island comes down to less natural causes. Some even think the CIA destroyed the island on purpose to undermine Mexico's oil drilling rights. The theory was first raised in that original 1997 expedition to the supposed site of Bermeja Island, and it gained far more traction after the 2008 debate brought the island back into focus. It's not extremely far-fetched as far as conspiracy theories go either. Latin America in general is no stranger to CIA interference, which has usually been aimed at undermining the sovereignty of Latin American nations and allowing the U.S. and American companies to control those countries' resources. The CIA has overthrown governments, bought out politicians, and armed death squads in pursuit of U.S. economic goals, especially control over oil reserves. In this case, the theory goes that at some point during the Cold War, the CIA sent bombers to Bermeja Island and completely pulverized it. Some versions of the theory blame Mexican officials for collaborating with the CIA and covering up the incident. Regardless, the outcome would be the same. Bermeja Island would be no more. Mexico's control over the Gulf would be reduced, and Mexico would lose out on exclusive rights to a huge amount of oil. This wouldn't even be the craziest thing the CIA has ever done, or even the pettiest. But as good of a story as this is, we can say with certainty that it did not happen. Once again, those 2009 underwater scans shoot this theory down. They didn't just fail to find Bermeja Island, but they also didn't find anything to suggest there was ever an island there. There was no debris, no collapsed seamount, not even an undersea hill. All there is under that stretch of the Gulf of Mexico is a flat, stable, and mostly featureless bit of seabed. Bermeja Island was never destroyed, and it wasn't submerged either. It never existed at all. If the 2009 scans aren't convincing enough, there's yet more evidence to back this up. As far back as 1902, long before the US and Mexico began oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and long before the CIA was ever created, a French admiral operating in the area tried and failed to find the island, just like the Mexican Navy would almost 100 years later. The apparent disappearance of Bermeja Island made the papers in some places, but it seems like it was forgotten, most likely because nobody had a reason to care about the island until oil drilling started in the Gulf. This makes Bermeja Island an example of a phantom island, an island that never existed, but which sailors put down on old maps by mistake. Phantom islands are the products of human error and more limited technology than what we have today, and they're quite common on old maps. Apart from Bermeja Island, some famous examples that you might know include Sandy Island off the coast of Australia and Hy-Brasil west of Ireland. Most of the time, the sailors that charted these islands confused existing islands for new ones or mistook mirages for actual land. The more glaring cartographic mistakes were usually corrected pretty quickly, but smaller phantom islands, especially ones that nobody would visit even if they were real, could slip through the cracks pretty easily. They'd get copied over from one map to another and people would just assume they existed until someone eventually bothered to check. It might sound ridiculous that the world could go more than 400 years without noticing that an island isn't actually real, but the ocean is a massive place and people typically only cross it along established corridors, which are only a tiny fraction of the whole. A small, out-of-the-way island that nobody has any reason to visit can go quite a while without anyone getting close to it until someone decides to make sure it's actually there. It all just goes to show that, sometimes, you don't need a CIA conspiracy to steal a strategically vital island from you. All it takes is one or two cartographers 400 years ago putting a place that doesn't exist on a map. Once again, now's your chance to get rid of those pesky ads and sponsors. Go get a full free month of our geography community at thebyte.co. You'll even get extra and exclusive articles and videos. The link is in the description below. I hope you enjoyed learning all about Bermeja Island. If you did, be sure to check out this video all about Lake Ontario. Thanks for watching. See you next time.