It’s scary to think about what we DON’T know about the ocean, don’t you think?
There’s still so much about our seas that we’re clueless about and regular folks often have strange encounters that they can’t explain out there in the middle of nowhere…
Let’s hear from folks on AskReddit about the weird, wild, and amazing things they’ve seen way out in the ocean.
Start now!
In the Navy.
“Often times in the Navy id stand on the fantail and watch the ocean.
Once we had 100s, probably around 400 dolphins riding the carrier’s wake. They followed us for 3 days.
In the middle of the Pacific, its so dark and theres so little light pollution, you can see reds, browns and faint blues of gas clouds in the starscape.
Another time i was watching the water at night, they say it draws you in, and it really does. You look at this pitch black void, with only the wake or turbulence of the water catching light, and intrusive thoughts of jumping in just naturally occur. Its mesmerizing, especially if youre alone.
At night during one of these events I saw blue glowing water (what I now know was biolumenescent algae) and inside this rather massive patch of blue glowing water were squid, that appeared to be maybe 15-20 foot long. You could catch their outline by the light from the water.
I stared at what was multiple squid passing by for minutes, what seemed like an eternity and then the light started going away in the spot i was staring. There was still a LOT of glowing water, we werent headed out of it. But this patch gets darker and darker and darker until pitch black. A solid 15 seconds of intense curiosity. Suddenly a lot of turbulence and a whale surfaces. It had snatched up all the squid.
The whale cocked to one side and looked at the ship, and our eyes met i want to think. It studied the ship for a moment until just sinking back down until the glow of the water masked it completely.”
Sharks!
“Fresh out of college I got a job “In Cambridge, Massachusetts” or so they said…as an architect designing whatever.
Ended up doing oil rigs and one beautiful morning there were Sharks going under the main platform like always but there were two d**d sharks, next morning three new d**d, then four the next day.
Then a steady four or five a day for a week or two…they would float up under the see through deck that looked much like a metal colander. Crew would have to punch them down so the current could catch them with a large pole.
What made it really weird was they looked like they had heart attacks or d**d in their sleep, no marks or bites or anything. The guys on the rig had all kinds of theories. Then one morning while in a room that was completely submerged and had a beautiful view as we sat in a meeting…everyone got to see the reason the sharks were d**ng like viewing it on a movie screen.
This Octopus had made itself a home between the base and the deck. A shark was swimming by in a cruising fashion and we see these tentacles grab it right in front of the glass and snap it like a glowstick. The Marine Biologist smiled and said “Octopus is literally doing that to entertain themselves…like because he can”. The Marine Biologist lowered a dive camera and this Octopus was HUGE.
The crew would joke about it thereafter, people would smoke on the deck at night and people would say don’t let the Octopus in. Seeing those tentacles was just insane for their length and to think about how a shark is mostly muscle and the Octopus would just snap em was kinda scary.”
Whoa.
“Giant spears plunging in and out of the sea.
In the Gulf of Alaska, I have seen some s**t. But one of the most terror inspiring things I’ve seen are what can happen with some of the loose logs from the logging trade.
Sometimes when a big log gets loose from a raft, it becomes partially waterlogged and floats small end up. So you have this 4 foot diameter telephone pole in the sea, sticking up 40 feet into the air. No biggie. Shows up on radar, and easy to spot.
Now, give that pole 20 years of floating around or so. It rots in such a way that it becomes sharpened to a perfect point by wind and waves, and looks quite menacing.
Now, put it in a gale with 25 foot waves (50 feet trough to peak)
…. And it becomes a towering spike of death that shoots up from the sea every 15 to 20 minutes, out of nowhere, 60 feet into the air, only to plunge down into the dark depths waiting to skewer some unsuspecting boat in a few minutes when it thrusts out of the ocean again.
It is a genuinely terrifying sight, rare, but not so rare that I haven’t seen 2 in one season. It’s like the spiked d**k of Neptune looking for an opportunity to f**k your s**t up in a particularly terrifying way.”
A crazy sight.
“The northern lights in the middle of nowhere in Alaska.
We were anchored in a remote cove, so we turned off all the exterior lights.
A crazy thing to see.”
Trippy.
“I’ve seen the Flying Dutchman illusion, dolphins swimming through bioluminescent waters that looked like glowing torpedoes, meteor hits near the ship, lightening hitting the mast, waterspouts in the Caribbean, and the green flash at sunset.
Many more things as well, being at sea is just plain trippy!”
Really weird…
“I used to work on an Atlantic Salmon farm a few miles out to sea. Best job I ever had.
We were round at the second site (other side of the island to the main site, and this one was being left fallow for a couple years so just required some maintenance every now and then / was used for storage).
Me and my brother were there late afternoon to check some ropes or moorings or something, I can’t remember, when all of a sudden there was this really strong electrical / copper smell and the place went silent. It was flat calm, relatively clear skies so it wasn’t a thunderstorm coming in.
For some reason this smell really freaked us both out, and we both felt like we were being watched by something and there was a kind of strange feeling / atmosphere to the place where it just seemed off.
After a couple minutes it went away and the “atmosphere” returned to normal. We were pretty glad to get back to the main site but never experienced anything like that again. Really weird.”
Bioluminescence.
“In the USCG. Was in the the eastern Pacific in February 2017.
The bioluminescence at night was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Sailing the Caribbean you get the glittering speckles in your wake, but in this water the stern wake glowed very bright. Almost made it pointless to be running darken ship.
The bioluminescence was so much so that even fish in the water activated it. I remember a ghostly, glowing cloud silently move in toward us where we were taking it all in on the fantail. Then just as silently it moved away. We could see larger glowing clouds, likely a school of fish, then a glowing streak, maybe tuna or something come flying in to the glowing mass and the school would explode like fireworks underwater.
Saw this occur a few times. It was amazing.”
Enough to make you cry.
“I was a Quartmaster and when I was in the pacific, I saw a completely clear night one time.
I saw the Milky Way split the sky and I could see it’s reflection in the water. The sight was so beautiful it brought me to tears.”
Creepy.
“This was in the late 70’s.
We were in the South Atlantic near Antarctica on an oceanographic research boat, middle of nowhere and hadn’t seen another ship in two weeks. A calm day with fog here and there so we were sounding the foghorn as required. (not a pleasant experience on the bridge as your ears get blasted every 60 seconds) I was on the wheel when the mate said-“Whoa! Look at that!”-
Out of a fog bank about 500 yards away a two masted topsail schooner suddenly appeared sailing opposite our course. All sails up and no one on deck. And absolutely no image on radar.
We tried hailing on the radio but no answer. She ghosted into another fog bank and away from sight. It was one of those things that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. “
Up in the sky.
“Ssometimes we would have to pull super long 18-20 hour shifts at harvest time.
This involved starting sometimes at 2 am and working until late in the evening – there wasn’t actually loads of work the whole time, to do we just needed to be present for a lot of it and lift a cage net once an hour or so. So we mostly just stood around drinking coffee and talking bollocks.
Anyway I digress. We were starting out one of these mornings in the speedboat heading out to the site, on a really crisp winter night. Not a breath of wind, super cloudless sky and a hint of aurora above us. Speeding along into the night with my buddies in this beautiful scenery, nice fancy survival suits on to keep warm, I remember looking up and seeing a huge sky full of stars, and a shooting star burning across the sky out towards the horizon.
As I say I can’t really bring it to words, but I’ve never really felt more alive or happy in my work than that night.”
Do you have any stories like this?
If so, share them with us in the comments.
We can’t wait to hear from you!
