While conducting a flight for NASA's Operation IceBridge on April 14, 2018, IceBridge mission scientist John Sonntag photographed something he had never before seen.

In the ice of the eastern Beaufort Sea, he found these 'Curious Circles'.

There has been speculation that these holes are the result of seals or some other creature carving out air holes in the ice or perhaps caused by warm water from springs, seepage, or currents.

I have a different theory...

You may recall that I have looked into the intentional destruction of Arctic Sea Ice in past posts.

I have written of the damaging effects of icebreakers and of the use of explosives on Arctic Sea Ice spanning decades.

What first came to my mind when seeing these 'bizarre' holes was submarines.

I read about a technique described in this Economist article called Flexural Gravity-Wave Resonance.

The article speaks of Dr. Viktor Kozin and when looking further I found a 2007 paper written by him titled 'Resonance method of destruction of the ice cover. Inventions and experiments'.

From section 1.3. The destruction of the ice cover by resonant IGW from a moving underwater vessel (using Google translate)

Not that I'm suggesting the resonance method here, but it was with all that in mind that I went looking into these holes which baffled NASA.

It did not take long before I found this video by The Joint Forces Channel on Themtube.

Very Rare Three Submarines Surfaced In The Arctic At Once For ICEX 2018-subs start popping up around the 3:44 mark -

Now I can't be sure because I was not there and I don't know the exact location of the exercise, but it just might be possible these 'curious' holes and this submarine exercise might be connected.

According to NASA these holes were photographed on April 14, 2018 in the eastern Beaufort Sea.

According to reports, the 5 week training exercise ICEX 2018 took place in the Beaufort Sea, and the surfacing of the 3 subs in the video is said to have taken place March 10, 2018.

gif video source

Maybe I am wrong... but maybe I am right!

I am open to being proven wrong. Perhaps you can find GPS coordinates of the surfacing and they won't match the ones given by NASA for the holes.

It's just, people were speculating, so I thought I would too.

All images link to their sources.