We’ve all heard of rogue waves but I’ve also seen some scattered references to the even scarier Rogue Troughs, for example here or here
I know that huge waves have huge troughs in between but this seems to be a different phenomenon, like a moving deep hole or waterfall embedded right in the sea, which can strike during calm days.
Can anyone shed more light on these mysterious beasts, if they exist and make sense physics-wise? Anyone see one and live to tell about it?
Unusually large troughs or ‘holes’ do exist and have been documented - so they are there, and they do make sense from a physics perspective, although necessarily they are less frequently found than the more famous wave crests of unusual amplitude we normally think of as rogue waves.
I don’t know much about them myself, and have certainly never seen one, despite the fact that I’m on the ocean about once a week in most seasons. There may be relatively few people around who have seen one.
interesting. coincidence of several wave trains. i thought it might also be caused by frak differences in local atmospheric pressures. so rogues are likely to form in either swells or storm surges.
My experience with a rogue trough has haunted me for over twenty years now.
When I was 27 years old, I lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I owned an older 16 foot long fiberglass bow-rider with a 70HPO Mercury outboard. I had bought the boat and motor used. It was probably 10-15 years old when I bought it. It rarely started on the first try and the motor had some issues.
I mostly took the boat out to the Everglades and fished for bass. But on occasion, during the summer, if the seas were very calm, I’d take it out of Port Everglades inlet and drift fish for snapper and grouper off Fort Lauderdale. One summer afternoon, I took it out of Port Everglades and turned off the motor and started drift fishing about a mile off John U. Lloyd State Park on the south side of Port Everglades.
I had one pole in the water on a rod holder, and one in my hand. I was facing shore. But for some reason, I turned around and looked out to sea and saw a long, ¼-mile-wide black line coming towards me quickly. I had no idea what it was because I had never heard of, or saw a rouge trough. As I watched it, trying to figure out what was headed towards me, I became more and more alarmed. It was only a few seconds that I watched it. It came within about 75 yards of my boat and then I threw down the pole I was holding, ran to the helm, cranked the boat over (it started first try), I headed the boat towards what was headed towards me. I thought it might have been a huge whale or something, but it would have had to have been swimming sideways for it to be a whale. When I realized it was a moving hole in the water, I gunned the throttle and drove over the trough. I made it to the other side without falling into it. It was about 20 feet wide so if the motor would not have started on the first try, my boat and I would have fallen in. The trough seemed about 20 feet deep so this thing would have swallowed my boat. I was not wearing a life vest at the time. I am an advanced certified scuba diver and didn’t think I needed one.
If I had not turned my head and looked out to see, I would not have seen it. If my boast would not have started on the first crank, my boat would have fallen into the trough. If the trough was wider, I would have gone bow-down into it.
Needless to say, after realizing what I had just experienced, I rode back into the inlet, put my boat back on its trailer, and was so traumatized, I sold my boat the next week. That was 20 years ago and I have not been on a boat out of an inlet since.
I now live in North Carolina and have bought and sold another boat since, but it never in saltwater. I do love saltwater fishing, but now, I only surf fish.
Lessons learned:
Always wear a life vest any time you are on a boat. Yeah, I know they are annoying, but you never know whether a rogue trough or wave will come along.
After researching rogue troughs and waves with other Florida anglers, it turns out that the huge cruise ships that enter and leave Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida sometimes contribute to creating the rogue waves and troughs.
Never be in a boat with your back to the sea. Assign one person on the boat to always be scanning the open ocean for rogues.
If I ever find myself in another off-shore fishing boat, (not likely), I will be sure to keep the motor running while drift fishing.
I NOW believe in the Bermuda Triangle and firmly believe that rogues cause a lot of the missing boats. If my little 16 footer would have fallen into that tough, it would be sitting on the bottom. My boat was old and would not have floated up a like Boston Whaler. My old boat did not have the floatation like the newer boats now have. Beware of ocean troughs!
WOW! That definitely sounds scary, indeed, it must have been terrifying to have caused you to immediately sell your boat and forsake going offshore fishing, ever again.
Out of curiosity, have you ever heard of this phenomenon occurring in the Gulf of Mexico? (I occasionally go offshore fishing/rig diving out of Freeport and Galveston, Texas.)
Terrifying indeed, but it bugs the hell out of me that he repeatedly misspells the name of the USS Ramapo as “Rampao.” Typos are one thing, but to consistently mangle the name of a famous ship makes me doubt the veracity of the rest of the article.
Edit: Make that TWO ships – he misspells SS Michelangelo “Michaelangelo”
I don’t personally know anyone who has seen a rogue trough in the Gulf. However, I was only about a mile off shore so I would think it could happen just about anywhere. I believe I was in about 75 feet of water. Vince
Welcome Vince. Amazing - and really weird - story.
I’ve always pictured them as being pretty wide, like several hundred yards.
As a related phenomenon, the ‘sucking out’ of the sea from shores and bays that sometimes - but not always - precedes a tsunami is actually similar to a rogue trough, although they typically are several miles long and travel at hundreds of miles an hour.