#2
It’s Criminal:
The Mystery of the Black Orchid
A Trinity Scott & Gio Rossi True Crime Production
The divers swim lower, lights tunneling into an eerie underworld gloom. They glide toward the Black Orchid’s stern, which hangs over the dark void of nothingness.
INT. Research Vessel On Surface
Members of the Triton crew and the Harrington Foundation gather around a monitor. They watch a live feed from the dive team below. They are tense, excited, nervous that the Black Orchid could dislodge and go over the cliff with divers inside.
VO—Trinity Scott
“In late 2018—just over a year before the Black Orchid set sail on her fateful voyage—an unusually intense swarm of earthquakes started around Santorini, spreading undersea to the nearby islands, including Amorgos, Anafi, and Ios.
“Tens of thousands of these small quakes were recorded, some occurring just a few kilometers below the seafloor, others far deeper.
Some were larger than a five in magnitude.
They were triggered by magma rising from a reservoir beneath Kolumbo, a submarine volcano near Santorini.
As the magma moved, stress is transferred to nearby faults, ultimately suggesting that Santorini and the Kolumbo are more deeply coupled than previously understood.
“While no catastrophic damage or major casualties were recorded during that period, public anxiety was sky high.
Schools on Santorini were closed and a state of emergency declared.
The fear was of a ‘big one’ still to come.
Or worse, another cataclysmic volcanic eruption like the event that occurred around 1600 BCE and devastated the nearby Aegean islands at the height of Minoan civilization.
Ash, pumice, toxic gases blanketed parts of Crete and caused tsunamis up to fifteen meters high that wrecked coastal Minoan settlements and harbors, disrupted agriculture and trade, and devastated the Minoan economy.
“This eruption and ensuing Minoan collapse—historians and volcanologists believe—is the most plausible real-world inspiration for the ancient tales of the lost city of Atlantis.
“The caldera remains under close watch, but so far is showing no further signs of uplift, imminent collapse, or eruption, but back in 2018 those swarms did push up an undersea reef near the tiny volcanic island of Scylla, which forms part of the caldera ring.
The Black Orchid captain, Sophia Bellini, and her crew were unaware of this yet uncharted danger lurking below the surface.
“The fear now aboard the Triton as their dive detectives go deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship is that another tremor—even a tiny one—could instantly dislodge the precariously balanced wreck and topple the Orchid into the seemingly fathomless void of the caldera. To be swallowed by a metaphorical Charybdis, or sucked down to the vanished city of Atlantis.”