I'm neither a physicist nor an oceanographer (Jim), but I seem to recall the idea of constructive and destructive interference, whereby sets of waves that meet can reinforce each other creating more powerful waves or effectively cancel each other out (and one another in weird multi-wave collisions?).
Could climactic and geographic factors bring about a major area of destructive interference.
Yes and no. (Go not to myself for advice for I will say both no and yes.)
Destructive interference is a simple concept. Two sets of waves cancel each other out when they are the same wavelength, and the troughs of one set match the peaks of the other, and vice versa. This is the principle used in noise cancelling headphones.
It s theoretically possible for two natural sets of ocean waves exactly to cancel each other out. However, it would require freak conditions and in practice, is most unlikely, and if it happened at all, it would be on a small area.
Waves on the ocean are seldom straight lines. The wind blows in one area and the waves radiate from the wind. From their point of origin, waves gradually grow in size as they absorb more energy from the wind, then they gradually decrease in size once they are away from the wind and they start to lose energy. The wind itself is never uniform in strength.
When waves hit shallows or pass near to the shore, they bend towards the obstruction. (This can be fascinating to watch at Lulworth Cove, for example. Waves enter through a narrow gap between headlands and they curve so that they break uniformly along a semicircular beach. (Concave curve.))
Thus, two sets of naturally formed waves could interact to cancel each other out, but as they would both be curved, the area of perfect cancellation would be small.
The surface of the sea is a chaotic system: everything is governed by cause and effect, but small irregularities in the cause (gusts of wind) and the effect (waves interacting) mean that exactly what happens at any point and time cannot be predicted. Stand on a Cornish headland and you will see an obvious rhythm to the waves, but watch each one closely and you will see that they break differently, and the force with which each wave hits the rocks will depend on how much it is undercut by the backwash of the previous one.