Are there aliens and bases under the ocean? In this episode of Why the Big Secret on the 4biddenknowledge network, host Roderick Martin and Billy Carson argue that the question hides two different ones: whether extraterrestrial craft use the sea as cover, which the Navy's own "transmedium" sightings suggest, and whether an older aquatic intelligence has lived in the deep all along, which the Dogon, the Zulu and the Sumerian tablets describe. Carson's position is that it is probably both, and that the real "big secret" is why so little money goes into exploring the 95 percent of the ocean nobody has seen.
Martin sets up the first half alone, walking through the Mariana Trench, the Navy videos and a series of viral clips, then brings Carson in for a long conversation that ranges from the Nommo to the Baltic Sea anomaly to why disclosure will have to come from the public. This companion follows the same order and notes where the claims rest on tradition, where on documented incidents, and where on footage whose origin is disputed.
What does the ocean floor have to do with UFOs?
Martin opens with scale. Seventy-one percent of the planet is ocean, only about five percent has been explored, and the Mariana Trench is deep enough to swallow Everest with miles to spare. His question is why governments spend heavily to look for anomalies in space while ignoring the nearer frontier.
He then connects the two. Working with MUFON, he says, he saw a recent sighting report in which the three states with the most cases were California, Florida and Michigan, all heavy with coastline. Most of the famous Navy encounters, the Nimitz "Tic Tac" of 2004 and the USS Omaha footage, happened over water, and witnesses described objects entering and leaving the sea without slowing down. That "transmedium" behaviour is the one thing the UAP hearings have put on the record, and it is the basis of the acronym USO, unidentified submerged object.
What were the Russian divers supposed to have seen?
Martin recounts a story that circulates in UFO literature as the Lake Baikal incident: Soviet military divers in the 1980s encountered swimmers at great depth, about three metres tall, wearing helmets but no breathing gear. When the divers tried to net one, the account says, a force threw the whole team to the surface and several died of decompression. Martin presents it as "well documented"; in fact it traces to a 2009 Russian television report on supposedly declassified Navy files and has no primary source anyone has produced. He uses it to make a fair point regardless: if such beings exist, attempting to capture one is exactly the wrong first move.
He also shows several viral clips, among them a webbed hand pressed to a submersible window, which spread after the Animal Planet programme "Mermaids: The Body Found." Carson calls that clip "verified," so viewers should know the programme was a scripted mockumentary. The point both men draw from it, that the deep is unexplored, stands on its own.
Who were the Nommo, and why does Carson start with the Dogon?
When Carson joins, he moves from footage to tradition. He cites the Sumerian tablets, where some of the gods are shown with the head of a man and the body of a fish, and then the Dogon of Mali, whom he describes as original inhabitants of Kemet who migrated south and kept their teachings. According to the Dogon, the Nommo came from the Sirius system, were amphibious and fish-bodied, and taught the tribe the orbit of Sirius B, an invisible white dwarf, along with the shapes and colours of the planets. Carson adds that the Zulu carry a similar account of "mer-men" who could come ashore in suits but preferred the water, and that the two African traditions are the real source of mermaid folklore.
The Dogon account comes from the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule in the 1930s and 1940s. Later fieldwork by Walter van Beek in the 1990s found no Dogon knowledge of Sirius B independent of Griaule, and critics argue the astronomy was introduced during the interviews. Carson's view is that the knowledge is ancient and hand-delivered; our piece on the Dogon and Sirius sets out both sides.
He also links the sea to the Sumerian pantheon. He first says Enlil was Poseidon, then corrects himself later in the episode: it was Enki, god of the Abzu, the freshwater deep, whom he equates with Poseidon and after whom, he says, the planet Earth is named.
What did Columbus see?
Carson's historical example is the entry in Columbus's log for 11 October 1492, when the admiral, on the deck of the Santa Maria, saw a light "like a little wax candle" rising and falling in the distance a few hours before landfall. Carson reads it as an object coming up out of the ocean and climbing into the sky, and stresses that in 1492 there were no aircraft, no electric lights and no drones to explain it. Historians usually read the light as a fire on shore or a fishing boat; the log does not say it rose into the sky. Carson is explicit that his interpretation is "as close to the truth as possible," not proven.
Is it aliens, or an ancient aquatic civilisation?
Here Martin presses the question the episode is built around, and Carson gives a two-part answer. One possibility is that extraterrestrials arrived in ancient times and built a breakaway civilisation under the sea, leaving descendants with advanced technology. The other is that some marine life became sentient and humanoid while staying in the water. "I think it's probably a combination of both," he says. Martin adds a third category, giving "us, them and the people coming from somewhere else," three groups sharing one planet.
Carson's reason for believing something is there is the planet's size: humans occupy a thin surface, beneath the oceans there is more volume than above, and nobody has looked.
Why doesn't anyone explore the deep?
Carson's answer is money and motive. Deep-sea projects need funding that only governments and large institutions have, and, in his view, the people who control that funding already know what is down there and do not want independent researchers finding it. His example is the Baltic Sea anomaly, the Millennium Falcon-shaped object found by the Ocean X team in 2011 with a long "skid mark" behind it. He says NASA sent the divers a gag order within two weeks, that the captain eventually ignored it, went back, took a sample and found a second object nearby. Geologists who examined the samples identified them as glacial deposits; Carson's view is that the object is a vessel, possibly one that crashed after a battle. Martin says he spoke for hours with one of the Ocean X explorers and hopes to bring him on.
The bigger reason, Carson argues, is what discovery would do. If people learned they were "the new kids on the block" among older intelligences, the religious, financial and military systems built on the current story would be questioned and, in his words, "torn down." Keeping the public "worried about the colour of our skin and how to pay the bills" is cheaper. Readers who want the documented version of what classified programmes actually exist can start with the secret space program explained.
Why don't they just show themselves?
Martin asks the obvious question, and Carson's reply is that any intelligent species watching what humans have done in the oceans, nuclear tests, sonar that damages whales, submarines carrying missiles, would conclude that making contact is not safe. "If you land a UFO at the White House you'll be struck with so many weapons," he says, and the same goes for anything surfacing beside a destroyer. He is careful to add that "we" means a small group of decision-makers, not eight billion people, though he argues the rest are complicit by paying for it and staying quiet. Martin offers a thought experiment: an ambassador who walks into an oil company board meeting with free energy does not walk out, and nobody sends a second one.
What is the conversation about programming and the young?
Martin shifts to why the subject is hard to raise, especially in African American communities, and Carson answers with what he calls the matrix. From birth to age seven, he says, the mind is programmed with a name, a race and a religion, then reinforced by cartoons and a school system "set up like a prison," until people become both prisoners and prison guards. His remedy is to aim at the young, whose "limbs are easier to bend," which is why he uses shock, music and TikTok. Martin wants to put telescopes in underprivileged neighbourhoods for the same reason.
Is disclosure coming?
Both men are sceptical of official disclosure. Carson's reading of the UAP push is that it is narrative control: rename UFOs as UAPs so the subject sounds serious, frame them as a threat, and use the fear to move trillions into a Space Force and black-budget contracts. He cites the Gulf of Tonkin as the precedent for a manufactured incident and warns that a home-built craft could one day be presented as a hostile "UAP." Martin points to Morgan Stanley's forecast of a trillion-dollar space economy by 2040 as the money trail. Carson's conclusion is that real disclosure will come from researchers and the public, and he describes the "hundredth monkey" idea: once enough people accept something, it tips into common knowledge. He says the same in UAPs vs UFOs.
Watch, read, listen
Watch the episode above or on the 4biddenknowledge Podcast page, and catch Roderick Martin's series on 4BK TV at Why the Big Secret. The pair's other episodes include Gods Among Us and Noah's Ark explained. For the ancient-contact background, visit the Anunnaki and Sumer topic hub and the UFOs and extraterrestrials category.
Frequently asked questions
What is a USO?
An unidentified submerged object: a craft or anomaly reported moving under water, often entering or leaving the sea at speed. Navy witnesses in the 2004 Nimitz and 2019 Omaha cases described objects doing this, which is why "transmedium" became a term in the UAP hearings.
Who are the Nommo?
Amphibious beings in Dogon tradition who, according to Marcel Griaule's 1940s fieldwork, came from the Sirius system and taught the Dogon astronomy, including the existence of Sirius B. Carson treats this as evidence of ancient aquatic visitors; later anthropologists question whether the astronomy predates Griaule's visits.
What is the Baltic Sea anomaly?
A roughly 60-metre circular formation on the seabed found by the Ocean X dive team in 2011. Samples examined by geologists were identified as glacial deposits; Carson and the divers argue it is an artificial object. The NASA gag order Carson describes has not been documented.
Did Soviet divers really fight underwater aliens in Lake Baikal?
The story comes from a 2009 Russian TV report citing supposedly declassified files. No primary document has surfaced, so it should be treated as an unverified account.
Why does Billy Carson say disclosure won't come from governments?
Because, in his view, admitting the phenomenon means admitting decades of denial, and because the current UAP framing serves budgets rather than truth. He argues the public will reach acceptance first, through what he calls the hundredth-monkey effect.
Sources mentioned
The 1960 Trieste dive of Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh; MUFON sighting reports; the Nimitz and USS Omaha encounters; the Lake Baikal account (Russian television, 2009); "Mermaids: The Body Found" (Animal Planet, 2012); Marcel Griaule's Dogon ethnography; Columbus's log for 11 October 1492; the Ocean X Baltic Sea anomaly (2011); and the Morgan Stanley "space economy" report.
