When I was a kid, I thought those pillars went down to the sea floor.

In reality, they usually go down to some large submerged floats.

I dislike this. 

Pillars and floats like that are pretty stable, compared to regular boats, so there’s even a research vessel, called FLIP, that purposefully capsizes itself to be more steady when conducting research.

YEA IT FUCKIN IS (id embedded in image)