The Los Roques islands off the coast of Venezuela are beautiful destinations for tourists -- up to 70,000 people visit each year, dwarfing the 1,500 people who live on the archipelago -- but the islands are also the site of mysterious disappearances that might be caused by strange weather phenomena.

In January 2013, a plane carrying Italian fashion mogul Vittorio Missoni and five other passengers and crew vanished without a trace. And the airplane is hardly the first to go missing. According to the Daily Mail, at least 15 small aircraft have declared emergencies, crashed, or disappeared while flying through the region. The Daily Mail also reported that in a plane crash in 2008, 14 people died and no wreckage was ever found from the accident.

Early in June 2013, a Sea Scout ship equipped with underwater tracking technology resumed the search for the airplane that disappeared in 2008, reported El Nacional, a national newspaper in Venezuela. El Nacional added that after the Sea Scout has completed its search for the 2008 crash, it will assist in looking for wreckage from the January 2013 crash.

Although some have speculated that the Los Roques are cursed and have become a "new Bermuda Triangle," others say there is a logical, possibly weather-related explanation for the crashes.

"There's always some explanation for these things -- even if it takes many years to uncover the answer. Pilots … are increasingly aware of previously unknown meteorological phenomena such as coastal wind shearing and mountain waves, which can cause sudden turbulence," said Nick Wall, editor of Pilot Magazine,in an interview with The Guardian.

According to Discovery News, wind shear occurs when the wind changes speed or direction along a straight line. The phenomenon has been known to cause plane crashes in the past, since it can cause the lift on the plane's wings to disappear.

"Wind shear is particularly dangerous and can cause a sudden change in altitude and air speed," said weather.com meteorologist Christopher Dolce. "It's most commonly found near thunderstorms where either a horizontal or vertical change in the direction or speed of the air movement can occur in a short distance."

Although the accidents near Los Roques remain unsolved, perhaps in the future technology will allow pilots to more easily identify changing weather patterns and the disappearances will end.

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Circa 1936: Air hostess Daphne Kearley of Golders Green tending to the crew of the new luxury air service from Croydon, England to Paris, operated by Air Dispatch. (Ward/Getty Images)