Someone Asks Sailors Or People Who Work At Sea “What’s The Most Creepy Or Most Amazing Sight You Witnessed?” And 24 Deliver
If you’re a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, chances are you’ve imagined yourself sailing out on the open water at one time or another. While those films don’t make the lifestyle of a seafarer seem very glamorous, they certainly do make it look exciting!
What made it really weird was they looked like they had heart attacks or died 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 dying 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.
I’ve also 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!
Then there was the time i had 2 black hawk helicopters fly under the bridge i was currently under at 3am. I can't imagine that was sanctioned by thier co.
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.
It was the night watch and I horribly sick and curled up on the floor of the head (bathroom) in the back corner of the bridge. The officer of the deck must have thought I'd gone completely crazy because they'd hear me vomit my guts out, flush the toilet, then start laughing with joy and wonder.
The toilets flush with seawater and we were going through a patch of bio-luminescence. Every time I threw up and then flushed the toilet in the pitch black little room, the bio-luminescent organisms would flash making an amazing fireworks show in the toilet bowl.
It was like seeing a Roman legion marching to battle.
I generally love seeing dolphins but there was something quite daunting and slightly scary about seeing them work together in such a business-like way.
This sparked quite a reaction on the bridge and in operations. We were forward deployed during wartime although not in a region where active fighting was expected. For a moment people scrambled, fearing we had been targeted for a surprise missile attack.
Then the sky went dark again just as suddenly as it had began, leaving us safe and alone again. Yet there was still a whole bunch of commotion on comms as people jabbered stuff that amounted to *whiskey tango foxtrot.*
The only crew member who saw what had really happened was me.
"It's a meteor. It's a meteor. *It's a meteor.*"
Had to repeat the report several times before anyone paid attention. A meteor had come down almost directly above us, then broken up into three pieces as it burned up in the atmosphere. It was like a fireball.
That put on quite a lightshow in the the ocean on a moonless night at oh-dark-thirty in the middle of [expletive] nowhere.
Astronomers call these bolides. It might even have been a superbolide but it isn't on the list of recorded superbolides. We may have been the only ship that saw it.
Based on the time of year and the location it may have been one of the southern Taurids: a meteor shower that's noted for producing fireballs.
Not a whole lot of people ever witness a meteor that spectacular. By lucky coincidence I got a good view of this one.
(Edited from replying to a similar question two years ago.)
Creepy:
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.
Awesome:
This one is hard to describe, but sometimes we would have to pull super long 18-20 hour shifts at harvest time. This involved starting sometimes at 2am 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.
Edit to add: sorry, footage was the property of the TV station who was filming. I have an old VHS tape of it somewhere, I should get it digitalised. I’m betting there are plenty of similar incidences on YouTube though. Those fishing boats carry rifles for a reason.
Another time in the middle of the night between midnight and 3am we start tracking a target of interest. We clearly see someone and at least two others on a cabin cruiser. The vessel is unlit which is a red flag and steady speed. So we follow it and decide to launch the small boat for pursuit once they are close to U.S. territorial seas. We run our small boat with lights off as well and have night vision goggles to help us see them. I pull up with 15’-20’ of the vessel and flip the blue lights and spotlight on them. No one is on the boat. All we see is a boat no one standing up behind the helm or on deck. So I creep up closer than all of a sudden we see arm hanging over the gunnel. The boarding team starts yelling show us your hands and stand-up. No one moved they were laying on-top of each other. So we get the boarding team onboard and start checking boat for safety. We transferred all of the 26 migrants off the 35’ boat on the Fast Response Cutter (154’).
We thought it was a sperm whale, but it's hard to tell when it's half gone.
We got to see a lot more fish and a few whitetail sharks in the area. A dead whale seems to bring the sea to life!
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And apparently, it can be in real life too. One curious Reddit user recently asked sailors to share some of the creepiest and most amazing sights they’ve ever witnessed on the water, and they did not disappoint. From enormous sea creatures to incredible skies, you’ll find the most fascinating responses below, as well as a conversation we were lucky enough to have with Mahesh B. of Blogging Sailor. And be sure to upvote the tales that make you channel your inner Captain Jack Sparrow!
#1
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.
Image credits: mourningreaper00
#2
In the pitch black of night, in the middle of the vast emptiness of the sea; you see the stars filling the heavens, and more shooting stars than you would expect streaking to the earth with their firey tails. As your eye draws down to the water, you find that somehow the ocean is darker and emptier than the sky. Your eyes strain for a glimpse of anything, but ultimately you only catch glimpses of strange and mysterious creatures lithely swimming just beneath the surface occassionally peeking above the surface or triggering flashes of bioluminescence that disappear as suddenly as they appear.
Image credits: Timitz
#3
The northern lights in the middle of nowhere Alaska. We were anchored in a remote cove, so the CO agreed to turn off all the exterior lights. Just a crazy, crazy thing to see.
Image credits: Curbside_Hero
#4
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 dead sharks, next morning three new dead, 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 died 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 dying 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.
Image credits: Cannotakema
#5
Was on watch and a lookout reported a ship on fire on the horizon. Looked through my binos and saw what they were looking at. Looked like a plume of flame really far away, just over the line of the horizon. Went and consulted the Astro books and discovered that it was actually moonrise. 🌙 The tip of the crescent was coming up over the astronomical horizon, and was bright red-orange. Still very cool.I’ve also 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!
Image credits: RiotousRagnarok
#6
The first time i saw noctilucent clouds. I had no idea what i was looking at. It was surreal. Also Bioluminescent algey that makes a big glowing "jet" behind the boat.Then there was the time i had 2 black hawk helicopters fly under the bridge i was currently under at 3am. I can't imagine that was sanctioned by thier co.
Image credits: You-Once-Commented
#7
You know the feeling of being in a full stadium? 10,000's of people all within sight of each other...all together? Multiply that by 100 and maybe that would be like the sea of sea mammals I was in the middle of, presumably on a bunch of food below...squid or something. There were half a dozen species of dolphin and half a dozen species of whales all together going completely crazy busting the surface white , hundreds of thousand I'm guessing. Going into the fo'c'sle of the small 42 ft lobster boat was like entering a different reality. Through the hull you could "hear". They were all "talking" to one another and I could say you could "hear" them but it was something else entirely...the bones in my skull and the rest of my body were vibrating at every frequency heard and sub and supersonic alike in alien rhythms and repeating patterns...a once in a lifetime sensation...lasted about half an hour. Highly recommended.
Image credits: fishified1
#8
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.
Image credits: Stehlik-Alit
#9
I was a new deck officer still in training on board an exploration ship. The officer of the deck was visiting (augmenting officer) from a similar ship, so I had to stay on the bridge to help them handle some of the particular oddities of our ship, even though I was still getting seasick back then.It was the night watch and I horribly sick and curled up on the floor of the head (bathroom) in the back corner of the bridge. The officer of the deck must have thought I'd gone completely crazy because they'd hear me vomit my guts out, flush the toilet, then start laughing with joy and wonder.
The toilets flush with seawater and we were going through a patch of bio-luminescence. Every time I threw up and then flushed the toilet in the pitch black little room, the bio-luminescent organisms would flash making an amazing fireworks show in the toilet bowl.
#10
Being out at sea was definitely one of the best experiences of being in the Navy. I got to see the northern lights, a meteor shower, and a blood moon. My favorite pass time was identifying the constellations. Eventually when I got to learn a significant amount I was able to tell what direction we were going. I’m seriously grateful I got to experience that.
Image credits: ChiliConCarne44
#11
Huge numbers of dolphins in a line, "shoulder to shoulder", working forward presumably driving a school of fish.It was like seeing a Roman legion marching to battle.
I generally love seeing dolphins but there was something quite daunting and slightly scary about seeing them work together in such a business-like way.
Image credits: princhester
#12
“ intrusive thoughts of jumping in” I used to work on a yacht and when I was on night watch I had this thought constantly. I thought it was super messed up, but now that I see this comment I’m happy I’m not the only one lol
Image credits: Train23
#13
It may sound simple, but being in the middle of the ocean at night, and being on a Navy ship means no exterior lighting.... You can touch your own face and never see your hand. Thats freaky... And then you start thinking about how you are just surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean on all sides.... That gets pretty freaky
Image credits: McFlyyouBojo
#14
Was standing topside watch on a dark night when the sky suddenly turned bright. For about three seconds something was incoming that lit all the weather decks up like daylight.This sparked quite a reaction on the bridge and in operations. We were forward deployed during wartime although not in a region where active fighting was expected. For a moment people scrambled, fearing we had been targeted for a surprise missile attack.
Then the sky went dark again just as suddenly as it had began, leaving us safe and alone again. Yet there was still a whole bunch of commotion on comms as people jabbered stuff that amounted to *whiskey tango foxtrot.*
The only crew member who saw what had really happened was me.
"It's a meteor. It's a meteor. *It's a meteor.*"
Had to repeat the report several times before anyone paid attention. A meteor had come down almost directly above us, then broken up into three pieces as it burned up in the atmosphere. It was like a fireball.
That put on quite a lightshow in the the ocean on a moonless night at oh-dark-thirty in the middle of [expletive] nowhere.
Astronomers call these bolides. It might even have been a superbolide but it isn't on the list of recorded superbolides. We may have been the only ship that saw it.
Based on the time of year and the location it may have been one of the southern Taurids: a meteor shower that's noted for producing fireballs.
Not a whole lot of people ever witness a meteor that spectacular. By lucky coincidence I got a good view of this one.
(Edited from replying to a similar question two years ago.)
Image credits: doublestitch
#15
I used to work on an Atlantic Salmon farm a few miles out to sea. Best job I ever had.Creepy:
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.
Awesome:
This one is hard to describe, but sometimes we would have to pull super long 18-20 hour shifts at harvest time. This involved starting sometimes at 2am 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.
Image credits: 89ElRay
#16
I once saw a rainbow by moonlight. Sadly this was before digital cameras, so I had no chance of getting a picture.
Image credits: Mogster2K
#17
My dad was competing in a marlin fishing comp near Weepa (the pointy top bit of Australia). Battled a fish for 4 hours (they catch and release). As it neared the boat, crew readied to haul it onboard and a camera team went in for the tight shot, hanging right over the edge. The marlin breached the water and then a huge Great White shark breached under it. Full length above the water, inches from the crews faces. Shark took the whole marlin, plus a big bite out of the boat. All caught on camera. Everyone was pretty shaken for a while after. I’ll never forget the pics of the bite mark, exactly like people do to crackers, with individual tooth marks, but a metre+ wide.Edit to add: sorry, footage was the property of the TV station who was filming. I have an old VHS tape of it somewhere, I should get it digitalised. I’m betting there are plenty of similar incidences on YouTube though. Those fishing boats carry rifles for a reason.
Image credits: MadameMonk
#18
The most amazing thing I've seen is watching the mountains in the sunrise while pulling into port in Norway. That was the moment I realized I was actually living. I don't think I'll see anything as majestic until I go back to Norway. Just beautiful!
Image credits: PierceDiLuna
#19
Not a sailor neither was my dad but my dad was fishing and had a baby whale come up to his boat and bumped it a few times, that video is probably the most insane thing I've seen.
Image credits: Alive_1292
#20
Stationed on a Cruiser during Operation Desert Shield, we were working 12 on and 12 off shifts. Me and a shipmate would lay on the fantail in the morning with one of the deck hatches open, the red lights shining out. We had a stereo back there and would blast the Doors while hearing rush of water over the hull. It was really surreal as the sun would come up over the Persian Gulf, seeing the water like glass reflecting the sun as it rose. That will always stay with me.
Image credits: Imyotrex
#21
Creepiest would be underway on 31st October / Halloween day off maybe 15miles off the coast of Florida near Miami. Lookout sights a white house boat looks like it’s just drifting. So we get closer on our Fast Response Cutter (154’) to make contact with them. Nothing, no one responded used radio, loud hailer and ships whistle. So Captain said lets launch our small boat and go investigate. During the small boat mission brief I reminded everyone that it’s Halloween day and this looks just like a horror movie storyline. So the boat launches and the crew gets onboard. The doors are closed, but lucky open so the crew can investigate. The boarding team slow conducts its safety sweep while looking any crew onboard. So here is a house boat floating on the ocean with no land in sight abandoned. So the boarding team marked the vessel with spray paint and left it. House Boat is probably in Europe if it didn’t succumb to the relentless sea.Another time in the middle of the night between midnight and 3am we start tracking a target of interest. We clearly see someone and at least two others on a cabin cruiser. The vessel is unlit which is a red flag and steady speed. So we follow it and decide to launch the small boat for pursuit once they are close to U.S. territorial seas. We run our small boat with lights off as well and have night vision goggles to help us see them. I pull up with 15’-20’ of the vessel and flip the blue lights and spotlight on them. No one is on the boat. All we see is a boat no one standing up behind the helm or on deck. So I creep up closer than all of a sudden we see arm hanging over the gunnel. The boarding team starts yelling show us your hands and stand-up. No one moved they were laying on-top of each other. So we get the boarding team onboard and start checking boat for safety. We transferred all of the 26 migrants off the 35’ boat on the Fast Response Cutter (154’).
Image credits: RBJII
#22
I saw a dead whale once. Out in the middle of the Pacific. Just bobbing along and getting slowly taken apart by sea life.We thought it was a sperm whale, but it's hard to tell when it's half gone.
We got to see a lot more fish and a few whitetail sharks in the area. A dead whale seems to bring the sea to life!
Image credits: crazym108
#23
Last deployment. Russian fighter jets flying right above us taking photos was pretty unsettling. Then on SIPR share drive we saw the photos of the Russians taking photos of us and it’s literally some dude in the back of the jet with a Casio.
Image credits: CrackCocaineShipping
#24
Flying fish jumping through the netting between the hulls and cheese-grating themselves all over the trimaran OR racing catamarans in the Gulf of Mexico and the water turning purple as far as I could see from BILLIONS of jellyfish.
Image credits: Alpaca-Bowl420
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