The Mystery of El Ojo and the Internet's ‘Truth’ Challenge

When I launched The Splash, I committed to a regular posting schedule (for your sanity and mine) and have been posting my newsletters first thing each Wednesday morning. This upcoming Wednesday dawn (now today) holds potential, by many accounts, to be the first sunrise after one of the most consequential days in our country’s history. I don’t know what we’ll be waking up to nor how I’ll be feeling. It is from this space of unknowing that I’m composing this piece now, and rather than address any of “this”, I’ll talk in circles.

Photo: Parques Nacionales Ciervo do los Pantanos (Argentina)

An image similar to the one above, attributed to David Attenborough, came across one of my social media feeds this week. It stopped me in my tracks for its oddly near-perfect, crisp, crescent shape—and that it involved vegetation and water and island and naturalist David Attenborough. A perfect recipe for my attention. Mostly because the circular shape and its crisp edges seemed so unlikely, but also because David Attenborough is David Attenborough (famous for Planet Earth and Blue Planet and dubbed the “father of the modern nature documentary”).

It turned out the source was some clickbaity David Attenborough false-fan page. (That it was served up to me likely is not coincidental.) Still, I was curious. A Google search told me the sight was El Ojo (“The Eye”), a “mysterious rotating island” in the Parana River Delta in Argentina, 120 meters in diameter, almost completely circular in shape, floating and rotating freely on its axis. Part of me wanted this oddity to be real and part of me was equally curious about just how deep the chasm of false information on the internet is. I jumped in. An hour later, I surfaced with the following tidbits: there were scores of written reports and videos of the island—all from dubious sources, timelapse images from Google Earth showing the island shifting location within the lake, a fluff piece from The Science Channel (Discovery), and sensational videos and claims of “haunted hydrology”, and extraterrestrial and paranormal origins. A quick search found no legitimate news stories, no legitimate scientific papers, no legitimate government sources. Yet, there are naturally occurring floating islands, generally found in marshlands, wetlands, and lakes, and formed from mats of aquatic plants, mud, and peat. These islands range from several centimeters to a few meters thick and can extend many acres across. They typically form when wetland plants—sedges and reeds mostly—creep out from the shoreline until the roots of the most distal plants no longer reach the bottom. Without their anchors, these plants rely on oxygen in their root mass for buoyancy and on tangled connections to nearby vegetation for vertical support. Eventually, storm events dislodge whole sections of vegetation, setting them free as floating mats. Over time, these mats bump around, sometimes re-welding themselves to the shoreline, other times conjoining with other mats and increasing in size. Hence, the floating islands. (And, I did find the crescent shape of El Ojo on Google Earth.)

The next morning, still unsatisfied, I searched a bit more and finally! found what I’d consider to be truthful—a report in an Argentinian paper published just last month that identified the national park in which El Ojo is found and quoted a geology professor who discounted all accounts of aliens and explosions, and instead hypothesized that methane, produced as marshy organic matter decays, is bubbling up from below, carving the rounded edges of the orb. (Yay! A “real” explanation that comports with what I know of rounded pockmarks, resulting from methane explosions, appearing on Siberian permafrost (yes, global warming is real), and African Rift lakes that suddenly and catastrophically overturn when the concentration of methane seeping into the bottom of the lake hits saturation levels and erupts from beneath.) And, it turned out the national park does exist and has a video of El Ojo on its website:

So, yes, El Ojo may be real, but so too is the challenge of finding “truth” online. It is the kernel of truth—likely hidden in each and every conspiracy theory out there—that is so insidious. In this case, I knew floating islands existed in nature. I also know—and am entirely fascinated by—the way in which forcing functions (wind, hydrostatic pressure, heat, cold, etc.) applied over long periods of time and in regular ways produce exquisite forms—near-perfect orbs, near-perfect shiny, flat cleavage planes, near-perfect stellate crystals. These forms never cease to amaze me, that they exist never ceases to amaze me. The stories of El Ojo, then, pulled on my sense of knowing and on my sense of awe. Were those crazy-perfect island edges real? This sets up the perfect conditions for belief in false gods: A kernel of a truth mixed with a large dose of baseless speculation presented to someone who vaguely recognizes parts of the story, is fascinated with a particular facet of the tale, and who, for whatever reason, wants to see it bear out. One dash of truth to ten dashes of balderdash equals pseudo-science (or pseudo-economics, pseudo-law, pseudo-you-name-it)—oftentimes good enough to set even the most highly-trained scientists scratching their heads: It sounds good, but something doesn’t seem quite right…So, while there are critically important arguments favoring the democratization of knowledge, tools, and technology to empower all voices, the erosion of gatekeeping institutions has a very real cost: We no longer know what is true. And, yes, each person has his or her “truth”, and there must be room for debate, for nuance, for alternative views; however, I have a hard time sending the concept of say, gravity, to the maw of the internet truth purveyors.

So much of the chaos and confusion and despair we face today, and the election battle we’ve endured, has been sown by misinformation, conspiracy theories, “fake news”, “false truths”. As an antidote to all of this—including whatever has come our way this morning—I’ll be focusing on the things I know to be real: the healing power of water and wilds, the strength of community, the love of friends and family, and the total awe I feel in finding the next near-perfect orb, the next near-perfect shiny, flat cleavage plane, or the next near-perfect stellate crystal, the total awe I experience in simply knowing they exist. And, oh yes, I believe in gravity.

Be well today.

xo Wendy

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